orienting conical flower pots
orienting conical flower pots
(OP)
For orienting plastic conical flower pots (7 inch top outer diameter) as soon as they are ejected from the mould of a plastic injection machine, I am thinking of using two transport screws with a blade pitch large enough to catch a falling pot in the cavities between the two screws. Preferrably the screws would be located horizontal under the mould of the plastic machine to transport the pots sideways for stacking and packing. Internet search sofar did not show any useful result. Important is that the released pots can have any 3d orientation as they fall onto/into the srews. Any help in finding or designing such type of orienting device (or an alternative) is very much appreciated.





RE: orienting conical flower pots
www.tynevalleyplastics.co.uk
It's ok to soar like an eagle, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
RE: orienting conical flower pots
RE: orienting conical flower pots
RE: orienting conical flower pots
RE: orienting conical flower pots
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: orienting conical flower pots
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: orienting conical flower pots
Just a thought.
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
RE: orienting conical flower pots
@John, nice system and it sure makes sense for multicavity moulds to do this in combination with a stacker.
In our case we are looking to gain just a few seconds per cycle. This business is all about cents per product!
So hopefully someone can guide me in finding a source for some active orienting device!
RE: orienting conical flower pots
RE: orienting conical flower pots
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
RE: orienting conical flower pots
Even with a single cavity mold, you could mold a spud on the tree that would let the ejected product be caught and picked up by something like a toolchanger arm that would swing it out of the molding machine, where the part could be degated and stuffed into a static tube with one stroke of a cross cylinder.
The static horizontal tube could be lined with plastic to produce a wrapped stack of pots right at the machine (like a Christmas tree wrapper or a sausage stuffer), or it could just lead to a packing station where the pots are manually handled.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: orienting conical flower pots
The parts all come out of the mold in the same orientation, and the place to catch it, grab it, whatever, is right then and there. Before it has any chance or movement during which it can change orientation. You have to figure this out, because you haven’t bothered to tell us how it comes out of the molding machine, only you know that.
RE: orienting conical flower pots
@Mike and dhengr: indeed creating chaos (with respect to pot orientation) seems a mistake. I understand what you say. The existing production cell right now has a robot with a hand with suction cups. As soon as the mould is opened (horizontal movement) the robothand enters into the mould to the machine centerline (horizontal stroke in), the machine blows out the pot into the hand, suctions cups build up vacuum, the hand moves a short stroke to move the pot from the male mould part and than the hand with cup moves out of the opened mould (horizontal stroke out) before teh mould closes again. This whole emptying process takes about 2,2 seconds (this mould open time is added to the total machine cycle time as you will understand)
We have calculated that when the pot is blown out of the mould (downwards), the mould open time can be reduced to about 0.6 sec. So a 1,6 sec gain each machine cycle!
This number is so huge that we cannot ignore it anymore, so therefore we are looking for some active orienting system to quickly reorder the chaos we created when blowing the pot out of the mould quickly.
RE: orienting conical flower pots
Also, do you use any mechanical ejection or does compressed air do all of the work?
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
RE: orienting conical flower pots
I think I understand your rail approach but am a bit worried about efficiëncy. We need 100% uptime, since the machine runs unmanned overnight. Do you have any experiences with the falling pattern variation you mention?
(am worried about the pot entering the rail properly/constantly)...
RE: orienting conical flower pots
The rail idea is only the most simplistic approach. Depending on the amount of automation you wish to incorporate, you can run an orientation program with the robot, as well. Your gains in cycle time as described should justify an adequate budget. IM's live or die by seconds of cycle time.
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
RE: orienting conical flower pots