Rutland Plastics selects UPM Conveyors for unattended production

Rutland Plastics has chosen UPM Conveyors to install and commission the use of eight belt conveyors which allow automatic product divert for quality control inspection.

Used on a KraussMaffei KM150 injection moulding machine, the quality control inspection consists of ferrous and non-ferrous metal detection, product cooling, parts separation, and box filling with a capacity of eight full.

Product divert is achieved by a small reversing conveyor located onto a swan neck conveyor in the well, and at any time an operator can reverse and transfer a shot to a sample drawer for quality control inspection.

Metal detection is based on a search coil under the inclined section of the swan neck, and on detecting a foreign body will stop the conveyor along with an alarm, so an operator can check and remove the foreign body.

The product cooling is necessary to avoid any defamation to the mouldings being produced, and UPM fitted a cooling tunnel with high flow air fans to reduce the temperature from 80 °C to 20°C.

Parts separation occurs via a roller drum with central adjustment for the gap to allow ease of changing so the sprues exit onto another swan neck for transfer to a granulator and mouldings discharge to a third swan neck for conveying to the box filling station.

The UPM box filling station is a two-tier construction and was designed to accommodate eight full boxes, eight empty boxes, and one filling, with the one filling box is located on a scale to count by weight.

The central control is a PLC controlling all aspects of the system interfacing with the variable speed drives on each conveyor and connected to the weigh scale.