Innovative production cell for food & beverage can lids

Togeth­er with its project part­ners, Upper Aus­tri­an com­pa­ny Elmet has devel­oped an inno­v­a­tive pro­duc­tion cell. The sys­tem man­u­fac­tures four dif­fer­ent cov­ers for bev­er­age and food cans, which have been dubbed as „SMART­caps“. SMART­cap is a col­lab­o­ra­tive project by Elmet, Sum­it­o­mo (SHI) Demag, Shin-Etsu, and Met­tler Tole­do. In the form of Elmet‘s SMARTshot E and SMART­mix TOP 7000 Pro sys­tems, two of the company‘s tech­no­log­i­cal flag­ships are used in the pro­duc­tion cell. The sys­tem will be pre­sent­ed for the first time at K 2022 at the exhi­bi­tion booth of Elmet‘s part­ner Sum­it­o­mo (Hall 15, Booth D22). The lead­ing busi­ness plat­form for the plas­tics and rub­ber indus­try takes place in Düs­sel­dorf from Octo­ber 19 to 26, 2022.

In the 26 years since it was found­ed, Elmet has become a glob­al play­er in the devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion of high-qual­i­ty equip­ment for man­u­fac­tur­ing sil­i­cone parts. Part­ners from all over the world uti­lize the know-how from Upper Aus­tria for devel­op­ing inno­v­a­tive sys­tems. Most recent­ly, Elmet has col­lab­o­rat­ed with three project part­ners to devel­op a pro­duc­tion cell that man­u­fac­tures four dif­fer­ent lids for bev­er­age and food cans. The accu­ra­cy of the injec­tion process is ensured and doc­u­ment­ed by a weigh­ing cell. A laser marks the fin­ished SMART­caps to ensure opti­mal traceability.

Lead­ing Elmet tech­nol­o­gy twice over

Lids for food & bev­er­age cans are man­u­fac­tured by an Elmet injec­tion mold, fea­tur­ing an all-elec­tric SMARTshot E valve-gate cold-run­ner sys­tem. Its tech­no­log­i­cal high-end coun­ter­part in mate­r­i­al pro­vi­sion is the Elmet SMART­mix Top 7000 Pro dos­ing sys­tem, respon­si­ble for pre­cise and reli­able dos­ing of mate­r­i­al to the Elmet injec­tion mold. A Sum­it­o­mo lin­ear han­dling device removes the parts from the mold and trans­fers them to the weigh­ing cell made by Met­tler Tole­do. Every sin­gle part is weighed there. The result is stored in a data­base and also dis­played graph­i­cal­ly to demon­strate the process accu­ra­cy of the sys­tem. After the weigh­ing process, the sil­i­cone parts are marked by laser to ensure high­est pos­si­ble trace­abil­i­ty. After laser­ing, the parts are placed on a con­vey­or belt.

The inter­ac­tion pro­vides the magic

The new sys­tem is not only inno­v­a­tive in terms of the per­fect sym­bio­sis of tech­nol­o­gy-lead­ing Elmet ele­ments. The mag­ic of this inno­va­tion unfolds in the inter­ac­tion between the high-tech con­tri­bu­tions from the four part­ner com­pa­nies. The com­bi­na­tion of high-pre­ci­sion dos­ing (Elmet SMART­mix Top 7000 Pro), the all-elec­tric injec­tion-mold­ing machine (Sum­it­o­mo Int­Elect), and the elec­tric valve-gate cold run­ner (Elmet SMARTshot E) enables a pre­vi­ous­ly unachiev­able lev­el of accu­ra­cy in the repro­duc­tion of part weights. The spe­cial four-cav­i­ty injec­tion mold from Elmet injects four dif­fer­ent can lids made of liq­uid sil­i­cone (LSR) from part­ner com­pa­ny Shin-Etsu. The sil­i­cone lids pro­duced serve as cov­er­ings for cus­tom­ary bev­er­age cans that have been in use for decades, such as those for soft drinks, ener­gy drinks and var­i­ous alco­holic bev­er­ages. A sep­a­rate cav­i­ty also pro­duces cov­ers for cus­tom­ary food cans made of sheet steel, which pro­tect the con­tents from insects, for exam­ple, and keep the opened cans fresh in the refrigerator.

Elmet SMART­mix TOP 7000 Pro

The dos­ing sys­tem is a new devel­op­ment from the Aus­tri­an com­pa­ny. Devel­op­ment work focused on reduc­ing the unit‘s foot­print to 1,150 x 790 mil­lime­ters. This makes the sys­tem the small­est liq­uid-sil­i­cone dos­ing sys­tem for 200-liter con­tain­er units on the mar­ket. Com­pared to its pre­de­ces­sor, the SMART­mix TOP 5000 P, the SMART­mix TOP 7000 Pro fea­tures a com­plete­ly new pump sys­tem, which now only con­tains approx­i­mate­ly one third of the liq­uid sil­i­cone in the sys­tem, mak­ing it much eas­i­er to clean. This char­ac­ter­is­tic is very impor­tant, par­tic­u­lar­ly for use in the med­ical and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal fields, where the pump unit is dis­man­tled and cleaned each time the mate­r­i­al changes, in order to pre­vent mix­ing of dif­fer­ent types of liq­uid sil­i­cone. Apart from the new pump unit, an opti­mized fol­low­er plate geom­e­try also helps reduce the amount of resid­ual mate­r­i­al. The new sys­tem boasts a mate­r­i­al uti­liza­tion lev­el of up to 99.6%. Drums are changed ful­ly auto­mat­i­cal­ly to increase ease of use and keep the amount of train­ing to a min­i­mum. Use of spe­cial seals made of FDA-com­pli­ant mate­ri­als also pre­des­tines the SMART­mix TOP 7000 Pro for med­ical applications

Team­work at the glob­al player

Not only know-how from Elmet can be found in the sophis­ti­cat­ed system.

„Only when com­bined with the all-elec­tric injec­tion-mold­ing machine from Sum­it­o­mo, the weigh­ing sys­tem from Met­tler Tole­do, and the liq­uid sil­i­cone (LSR) from Shin-Etsu does the unique sys­tem become a total work of art that we are all real­ly proud of,“ says a delight­ed Har­ald Wall­ner, CEO at Elmet.

The sys­tem can be seen for the first time at the Sum­it­o­mo booth at K 2022 in Düs­sel­dorf, Hall 15, Booth D22.

Elmet SMARTshot E with SMARTcontrol

The all-elec­tric Elmet SMARTshot E valve-gate cold-run­ner sys­tem guar­an­tees pre­cise fill­ing of every sin­gle cav­i­ty in a reli­able process. Set­tings for the cold run­ner are entered on an 18.5“ dis­play of the exter­nal SMART­con­trol unit. Thanks to ser­vo­mo­tors, it allows nee­dle adjust­ments in incre­ments of two thou­sandths of a mil­lime­ter. Nee­dle reg­u­la­tion is car­ried out in real time and mon­i­tored con­tin­u­ous­ly by the sys­tem. The inno­v­a­tive arrange­ment of the mini ser­vo­mo­tors enables noz­zle spac­ings of 44 mil­lime­ters. Pneu­mat­ic com­po­nents, on the oth­er hand, are a thing of the past. This saves ener­gy and facil­i­tates inge­nious cable man­age­ment with indus­tri­al plug con­nec­tions, which allows clean­ing work to be per­formed on the cold run­ner with­out any qual­i­fied elec­tri­cal personnel.