This website is operated by one or more companies owned by Informa PLC, and all copyrights belong to them. The registered office of Informa PLC is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
Regardless of the size of the part or the type of plastic, the three main factors affecting the quality of injection molded products are pressure, temperature and time. Mold Hotrunner Solutions (MHS), located in Georgetown, Ontario, optimized these parameters when it launched the M3 micro injection molding machine in 2016. This turnkey, zero-waste injection molding system provides new capabilities for medical device and electronic product manufacturers. The internal development of the system, including Rheo-Pro hot runner nozzles and ISOKOR molding technology, enables the M3-D08 machine to efficiently and accurately produce direct-gated micro-parts as small as 1.3 mg.
â???? We have created a new injection molding process to meet the needs that other machine manufacturers cannot meet, â????? MHS founder Harald Schmidt said. â???? M3 is the first injection molding system to produce high-quality micro-parts in a measurable and repeatable process. â???? However, the company saw an opportunity to further improve its capabilities. In 2020, MHS began to expand the M3 from a single module with 8 micro-part cavities to four 8 modules, achieving a higher-speed 32-cavity version. The new ALPHA M3-D32 combines robotics and advanced control systems to achieve higher throughput without compromising quality.
Flexible automation technology allows MHS to optimize M3 and other products in its product portfolio. MHS provides solutions for parts of various sizes in the packaging, automotive, construction and consumer goods industries. Founded in 2002, MHS is committed to creating innovative injection molding machines and hot runner systems to improve productivity, part quality and environmental impact. The company is headquartered in Canada and, as part of the Westfall Technik family, maintains an influence on a global scale.
MHS is committed to eliminating many long-standing defects in the injection molding process when designing the M3. Traditionally, the process begins when plastic pellets fall from the hopper into the tubular barrel. The screw feeder moves the particles forward, and the heater outside the barrel melts them. The plastic reaches the required temperature and viscosity before reaching the nozzle to be injected into the mold. Unlike traditional injection molding, hot runners use valve gates and internal hot runners to reduce the amount of useless plastic waste that is recycled or discarded after molding. However, they cannot completely eliminate waste, only some plastics can be ground and reused.
The original eight-cavity M3 must ensure that a perfect part appears every time the mold is opened. The machine requires coordinated horizontal and vertical movement to move a 500-pound mold with an accuracy of 10 microns in a fraction of a second. These challenges make it very difficult to design a repeatable machine that can simply maintain accurate pressure, temperature and time parameters. As the team expands the scale of the machine in 2020, maintaining these precise movements and hot runner functions becomes even more important.
MHS turned to Beckhoff Automation for a new control solution through the initial M3 construction in 2016, and it was able to use the same control architecture to design a 32-cavity system. â???? Beckhoff has been working with MHS since 2012, when it needed more automation, network and remote access capabilities, â???? Beckhoff Canada Regional Sales Manager Paul Pierre said. M3 achieves these goals through multiple solutions running on the Beckhoff C6920 Industrial PC (IPC). The control cabinet industrial computer has a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor. â???? C6920 IPC provides us with a powerful platform to realize all the required functions, which is almost impossible with traditional PLC, â???? MHS Automation Engineer Amir Abbas Shoraka, Sr. explained.
M3 has a widescreen CP3921 control panel for HMI hardware. This 21.5-inch multi-touch display allows MHS to reconfigure the control interface to better suit the micro-molding process. According to Kai Thielen, MHS Engineering Manager, in combination with the C6920 IPC, MHS provides an HMI with more logger variables and a smarter user interface. The large screen provides high transparency to the user interface and improves operator training. We have developed our own functions in the HMI software layout. we do not have–? ? Did not follow what other injection molding machine suppliers did——? ? ? ? We want something easier to understand and more transparent, â????? Thielen said.
The system openness of TwinCAT 3 automation software provides the best engineering platform for M3. The open PC-based control platform communicates effectively through all IT standards and hardware from other industrial suppliers. Together with easy remote access, TwinCAT allows MHS to send logger data via email and also supports archiving in the cloud, because many end users do not want to grant network access. Most micromolding end users prefer to store data locally instead of connecting the machine to the cloud. However, data collection solutions are the key to providing high-quality technical support and process improvement.
The EtherCAT industrial Ethernet system provides real-time communication for complex motion architectures. Because micro-parts use very little plastic, it is difficult to maintain the processing temperature without damaging the material. The MHS process does not heat the plastic melt to the processing temperature before it reaches the valve gate, thereby extending the working time of the plastic and significantly reducing waste.
The EL3314 four-channel thermocouple input EtherCAT terminal and the TF4110 temperature control software in TwinCAT make implementation possible. MHS uses 14 heaters with a tolerance requirement of ±0.1°C. EL3314 and temperature control software gave excellent results. Beckhoff servo drives also include the AX5721 encoder interface card to support high-resolution Heidenhain linear encoders. For I/O and drive safety, TwinSAFE technology controls safety locks, emergency stops, and safe torque-off options (STO).
In order to manage the movement requirements of the mold, Beckhoff’s AX5000 servo drive provides power for the horizontal movement AL2815 linear servo motor and the vertical movement AL2412 linear servo motor. â???? Without the real-time capabilities of EtherCAT in I/O and drives, it would be impossible to quickly achieve 10 micron accuracy, â???? Craig explained. The 32-cavity version also adds a side-entry high-speed robot, which moves 1,000 millimeters into the cell at a speed of 0.4 milliseconds, and then moves 0.4 milliseconds. The AX5000 drive and two AM8042 servo motors and an external resistor make this possible. â??? This application â????? Complex motion control architecture requires close collaboration, especially when adjusting linear axes, â????? Pierre added. â???? Working together throughout the process allows us to build strong relationships with MHS engineers. â????
Beckhoff’s technology supports the plastics industry solutions pioneered by MHS, including the original M3 and larger versions. â???? Beckhoff’s PC-based automation helped us achieve the accuracy of dynamic linear motion curves, email logs to prevent malfunctions, connect to the cloud, and communicate with third-party devices such as cameras and resin dryers , Â? ? ? Soraka said. Most importantly, MHS implements an accurate heater control profile to reach and maintain plastic? ? ? ? Working temperature and cycle quality control during part injection. Especially in ALPHA M3-D32, 62 heater controllers work in a control platform that controls the moving axis and machine operation logic in a cycle of 5 milliseconds. ???? In addition to robotics, M3 also provides some intelligent processing on the machine and a vision system for part inspection and mold safety, which is networked via EtherCAT. We did this with the same powerful PC-based machine controller without any performance loss. ? ? ? ? Based on MHS’s success in using EtherCAT, the company joined the EtherCAT technology group, which is the largest fieldbus user group with more than 6,000 members.
The original M3 machine produced an average of 170,000 micro-parts in one working day, with zero waste, and exceeded the industry standard. For example, if the weight of the part is 10 mg, exactly 1 kg of plastic pellets will be required to produce the entire process. Even with PEEK and other high-heat materials, M3 achieves this efficiency while maintaining quality standards. â???? Starting from the first M3 machine in 2016, the prototype parameters of the parts are consistent with the processing parameters of mass production, â???? Schmidt said.
Although the M3-D08 narrows the quality gap in micromolding, the ALPHA M3-D32 increases this capability to an unparalleled level of throughput without compromising its repeatability in terms of pressure, temperature, and time. For machine movement, injection, cooling, ejection and robotics, M3 can achieve cycle times of 4 seconds or less. This allows the scaled-up machine to produce an average of 690,000 parts per day, more than four times. MHS will continue to innovate in this field, provide different customers with high-precision plastic products, and strive to ensure the highest speed and quality in the micro-molding market.
Post time: Nov-05-2021
