IntraVis's Pre-Watcher technology used in PET bottle manufacturing

APPE will invest €1.5 million to install Sample Pre-Watcher technology, as the demand for recycled PET, resin blends and performance additives are making the manufacture of quality PET preforms that are used in the manufacture of PET bottles increasingly difficult.

The Sample Pre-Watcher will replace the manual inspection of preforms and provide an automated, rapid and more in-depth analysis of the preforms. Tasks carried out will include a complete visual inspection, colour analysis, cavity number recognitin and neck dimension examination. IntraVis expanded the machines capabilites to include weight control, thread-flash analysis and wall thickness variation.

"This off-line tool provides rapid analysis of key preform quality parameters," said Billy Jansen, APPE's group Quality and Sustainability Manager. 

"It supports APPE's operational and quality teams with fast and accurate data at the most critical periods in production, namely start-up and process interruptions, as well as routine quality control activity. 

"The extended feature-set has resulted in more consistent quality, earlier identification of quality issues and therefore reduction of scrap, as well as freeing-up operators' time on other value-added tasks," Jansen concluded.

IntraVis Vision Systems are represented in Oceania by HBM Plastics & Packaging Technologies.