X-Rite Incorporated and its subsidiary Pantone LLC will unveil next-generation color management solutions at NPE2015 to help customers achieve consistent color across the entire supply chain, from concept design through final product. The new Ci7800, a master-level instrument, and the cost efficient Ci7600 are benchtop sphere spectrophotometers ideal for the plastics, textile, automotive, and paint/coatings industries. They deliver best-in-class, sample-to-sample color measurement for increased accuracy and feature highest stability over a range of environmental conditions for opaque, transparent, and translucent materials. The new design makes them easy to use, configure, and service in the field. When used in conjunction with X-Rite Color software, the devices can adapt to fit into any color supply chain, automatically adjust instrument settings, track measurement requirements, and record images of each sample.
Other innovations available in the X-Rite booth S10097 include:
- a pocket-sized spectrocolorimeter used to compare the colors of lab samples or plastic parts in the field;
- spectral matching technology to help reduce color formulation costs;
- quality control software to eliminate the guesswork from evaluating color; and
- the Pantone Plastic Chip Collection providing a standard to match materials throughout the supply chain.
“X-Rite Pantone is focused on helping brand owners, compounders, quality control professionals, and plastics manufacturers gain a competitive advantage by ensuring that color specifications and tolerances are met throughout the supply chain for accurate colors at the point of delivery,” said Chris Winczewski, Vice President, Product Marketing. For more information, visit booth S10097 or www.xrite.com/worldofplastics.
Photo courtesy of X-Rite
Dukane Corporation will be featuring all its latest products at NPE2015. All these innovations are to give plastic part manufacturers more flexibility, efficient process control, and significant cost reduction. On display will be New iQ Series i220 Integrated Servo Ultrasonic Welder with patented Melt-Match® technology. This is a self-contained unit that houses Dukane’s patented iQ Series Generator and addresses the need of an “out of box” “plug and play” servo-driven Ultrasonic Welder. This machine provides the efficiency and reliability of a 100% digitally controlled, Multi-Core iQ Series power supply with the precision of an advanced servo press. Dukane’s patented Melt-Match® technology precisely controls the collapse speed profile during the weld and precisely matches the collapse speed during the melt phase. Thus, the ultrasonic propagation penetrates deeper into the bond area and the affected heat zone is larger, resulting in superior bond strength. Other new products on display will include iQLinQ™, a proprietary communication protocol designed to give end users an array of options to interface Ultrasonic generators with automated systems, and iQLogiX™, an optional module to simplify the configuration of work cells. Dukane is also presenting a paper at ANTEC® on “Round Energy Director Design for Ultrasonic Welding” processes. “Round ED” will provide plastic part manufacturers with a more robust design that eliminates variability associated with inconsistent shape, size, and melt characteristics of prevailing sharp ED design. For more information, visit NPE booth W4691 or www.dukane.com/us.
Photo courtesy of Dukane
Compuplast International Inc. will be showing off the latest version of the Advanced CAE tools for polymer processing that they offer at NPE2015. This includes simulation software for extrusion, thermoforming, blow molding, and injection molding. In addition to many “under the hood” improvements that help improve the stability and speed for all VEL™ Modules, the major improvements in VEL™ 6.8 deal with a conversion to 64 bit, which will allow for the solution of larger flow fields with greater detail. This should also help improve the response of the interface and user experience. Version 6.8 will also include a complete upgrade of the VEL™ Side Fed die module. The parametric geometry interface will allow for the development of a more precise flow field with more flexibility. The VEL™ 3D FEM module has also been updated to be completely 64 bit and parallelized to take advantage of multi-processor PCs. This has cut solution times by more than 50%. There are also a couple of new and powerful post-processing features that allow the user to better evaluate flow fields. The B-SIM™ Blow Molding simulation software, developed by Accuform s.r.o. of the Czech Republic, is now capable of performing fully 3-D simulation of the blow molding process using fully 3-D parison geometry. Prior to this, blow molding simulation often used a “mid-plane” type of assumption for the parison which was not really valid when forming parts with relatively small diameters and thick walls. Preliminary evaluations by customers show improved correlation with real parts. For more information, visit NPE 2015 booth S36078 or www.compuplast.net.
Photo courtesy of Compuplast
