Extrusion International USA 6-2019

36 Extrusion International 6/2019 MEASURING TECHNOLOGY Author: Rebecca Zachau, Corporate Communications SIKORAAG Even smallest metallic contamination in plastic pellets can cause significant problems during the production and processing of plastics. Whether the pellets will be used for the production of injection molded parts, cables, films or profiles – fault prevention almost always means a major effort and even more, when fault correction becomes necessary. The dismantling of injection molding tools, the exchange of hot runner systems and the reworking of cavities is time consuming as well as expensive At K-SHOW 2019, Tecnomatic will exhibit one extruder and two die-heads, part of its innovative range of products and will introduce the customers to the current industrial revolution, known as Industry 4.0 Focus on Industry 4.0 An innovationwhichwill change the future and it’s already changing the present is definitely “INDUSTRY 4.0”, which is becoming increasingly important and is involving more and more factories. Industry 4.0 plays a strategic role in co- ordinating, synchronizing and analyzing the machinery’s process, as well as supplying very important data to the human operators. Therefore the production process wil be Automated Sample Inspection and Detection of Metallic Contamination in Plastic Pellets more accurate and will make the human operator’s work easier. TECNOMATIC at K-SHOW will introduce customers to its system aimed at supporting the new digital industrial revolution, providing to the plastic pipes manufacturers a complete and integrated portfolio of products, solutions, industrial software and automation technologies. The system provides a simple user-friendly program for the networking of extrusion pipes lines. Via the machine’s EPC (Extrusion Process Control) system, several machines and peripherals are connected and linked together to be oper- ated via a uniform user interface, which enables interaction between the individual appliances. In this way, the entire Caption 1: Metal inclusions in plastic pellets, caused by a damaged extruder duringmaterial production Caption 2: Examples for plastic contamination (left): With an optical camera contamination are detected on the pellets’ surface as well as discolored pellets (middle). With an X-ray camera, metallic contamination are detected inside pellets (right)