ORLANDO, Fla.—Elmet Elastomere Produktions und Dienstleistungs GmbH has unveiled a new dosing system for injection molding liquid silicone rubber (LSR) that is specifically dedicated to 20-liter systems.
The Oftering, Austria-based company said the TOP 700 is the most compact dosing system on the market.
The delivery rate of the machine is more than 5 liters a minute at a maximum pump pressure of 210 bar. It utilizes 50 watts of energy consumption, leading to about one-quarter of the energy compared with other machines and has minimal compressed air consumption to reduce costs.
"The biggest problem in the industry from years back was where if they didn't do the change properly, then it integrated a lot of air bubbles into the material," said Robert Pelletier, operations manager at Elmet. "Now it does everything for you."
To help avoid errors, drum changes are fully automatic and can be finished within two minutes. There is screen instruction to walk operators through a drum change.
Only 40 milliliters of residue is left when changing a 20-liter drum, coming out to 99.8 percent of material utilization. There is also no longer a ball valve to release initial material for purging.
"On other systems, you need to do a lot of manual stuff where you need to align systems and are semiautomatic," said Mark Ostermann, head of sales for Elmet. "On this system, everything is fully automatic; no failure can occur because of the operator doing anything wrong."
Designed to achieve dosing precision for small parts, the volumetric meter for colors is 0.1 microliters. Additives and colors can be dispensed in 1-, 4- and 20-liter containers.
With being FDA- and EMA-compliant, the TOP 700 can be utilized in the medical technology and food industries. The abrasion-free pumping helps prevent metal particles from contaminating any of the material.
More intuitive operations of the systems like maintenance and simple clamp connections can be walked through on the screen attached to provide more user-friendliness.
