PF3 Series

Sheet Fed Heavy Gauge Thermoforming Machines

Open Chamber Design | Tailor Made | Automation Options 

Machinecraft has designed Open Chamber Type Machine based on the American concept for allowing the sheet to sag under gravity. This type of machine is useful in certain applications. The sheet is loaded by the loader automatically into a frame. The frame moves using servo motors from the loader to the heating ovens and then into a servo motor driven press!

Machine start-up – how do we want to do product changeovers & setup?

Motorised Frame Adjustment : The sheet adjustment is possible using servo motor driven XY frame, so the frame can be adjusted automatically using the setting on the touch screen.  The frame has pneumatic grippers that open and close to clamp the sheet.

Tool Loading & Clamping: The tool can be slid using ball transfer units on both the upper and lower table and then clamped using hydraulic units on the press

Process Parameter Selection

Loading: The sheet loader is on the back side of the machine. The stack of sheet is loaded on a base where a pneumatic up/down gripper holds each sheet and then places it on the adjustable XY frame.

Heating System: There are 2 x heating ovens in the machine – Upper & Lower for Sandwich heating the thermoplastic sheet. The heater elements are placed in a grid to cover the max. Forming area. The sheet enters the oven from the autoloader and then after heating it will move to the forming press.

       

Which wavelength is the best?? ...depends on which material we are processing.

Generally speaking every thermoplastic resin has a characteristic to be more "permeable" to ir-waves... so a wavelength is "more compatible" with certain materials and less with others..

IR Quartz

Type

Medium-Wave IR

Heater Wattage Top

500 W each

Heater Wattage Bottom

300 W each

Advantage

Up-to 25% energy saving, depends on the cooling time

The most important part of a thermoforming machine is to be able to achieve homogeneous heating over a thermoplastic sheet. The heaters can be individually set or set-up in zones using setting available on the touchscreen HMI

Special Heatronik Controller

Heater elements are connected to Heatronik control card. The advantage of using a special controller is that we can come to know of a faulty heater element in the touchscreen automatically.

The heating oven can be fitted with 1 x pyrometer placed in centre of top heater oven  – isolated from the heater oven using special construction - as an option

  1. Press: There are 2 x platens on the machine – upper and lower – both driven using servo motors. Both the platens will have vacuum line & water connections available.

  1. Vacuum System:

 

The machine comes with an integrated generously dimensioned vacuum tank which is connected to the centre of the top & bottom table using a hose. The machine has an automatic air-ejection system for part demoulding.

  1. Cooling System: After vacuum forming, the cooling system is started to start cooling the formed part

Centrifugal Fans

Centrifugal Fans blow air to cool the part. There would be multiple blowers.

The cooling system can be fitted with 1 x pyrometer - as an option