In designing the PF Series concept our engineers carefully looked at the advantages of the 1-step and 2-step manufacturing processes, broke them into individual elements, then re-combined them into the most efficient method yet devised for manufacture of PET containers.
In the “PF Series” machines, the preform is injection molded, partially cooled, temperature equalized,
re-heated and blown in what is termed a “cool parison” system. This concept, incorporates the advantages of both the 1-step and 2-step systems container molding methods in a unique bottle production system.
The practical result is a very compact injection clamp system at the preform injection station, while the blow station uses 2, 3 or 4 times less blow cavities to achieve a matching output.
This vastly reduces the mold investment cost when molding a variety of bottle shapes from common preforms.
Further simplification of the molds also results in vastly reduced downtime during mold changeover.
By separating the injection and blow processes, we designed the injection station with reduced preform pitch, allowing the use of a high strength but compact injection clamp design.
Unlike other systems, the preforms undergo additional cooling by either a cooling block or by staying on a second set of injection cores even after the next injection cycle starts, allowing greater efficiency from the injection cycle and reduced cycle times.
Preforms are allowed to stabilize their temperature from skin to core, an essential requirement for stable molding and optimized material utilization.
Where applicable pitch between preforms is changed to the blow cavity pitch.
Infra red heating by halogen heating lamps allows precise and consistent control of wall thickness, heating lamps are fully adjustable for position and power setting.
A variety of specialized processing techniques can be added here, including; Neck Orientation, Spot Cooling*, Handle Orientation*, Preferential Heating, Handle Inserter Device and others.
Additionally, the preform skin temperature is allowed to stabilize with the core temperature once more.
※ *Not applicable to PF24-8B
Either at step 3 or step 5, the pitch of the preforms is changed from the injection mold pitch to the blow mold pitch. Blow molds may be cooled (standard) or heated where special molding requirements exist such as semi-heat set.
Containers are removed from the machine and can be placed onto an optional take-out conveyor.