Sidel to Unveil SBO Compact™ Preferential Heating at Pack Expo Chicago

The need for flexible blow-molding machines that can efficiently produce a variety of simple and complex packages with minimal changeover downtime is met with the SBO Compact™ Preferential Heating from Sidel. Sidel will demonstrate the new linear blow molder at Pack Expo in Chicago (USA) November 9-13, 2008. This linear blow molder produces flat bottles and complex shapes in PET, at production rates up to 5,600 bottles per hour.However, it can also be quickly configured to run standard production bottles.The first SBO 4 Compact Preferential Heating blow molder is already up and running at Novapak, an American bottler that for more than a decade has specialized in PET packaging for household goods, lawn & garden, automotive products, personal care and food & beverage.FlexibilityPreferential heating is generally used to produce highly technical packages with complex designs at low annual production volumes. These bottles require a high degree of technical skill as well as flawless quality.“Bottle design is very important, it’s really the identity of the product. Brand owners want to have their own image, their own design. And quality goes without saying”, states Alexander Magyar, Vice President of Operations at Novapak.Thanks to its process expertise, Sidel provides optimal packaging/process adaptation and the best possible bottle quality. “We are very pleased with the processing of the machine and the resulting quality of the bottles,” Alex Magyar explains. “We know that when we design a bottle, the machine can do it.”Machine flexibility is another important aspect, because owing to the diversity of models, production runs are short. “Our average run is two days,” Alex Magyar states. “We have over 100 stock bottles available to anybody and close to 350 customer shapes that are specifically for one customer. With the number of molds we have, we want to get the flexibility to produce bottles with one machine, even if we’re not running preferential heating.”Though fully optimized for preferential heating, this new SBO can also be run for standard production, with a simple reconfiguration of the machine that takes less than 30 minutes. In addition, Quick Change molds and “perso” parts reduce format changeover times to 15 minutes. This time gain helps to reduce the time required for new bottles to reach the market, which is a key parameter for Novapak’s customers.   SimplicityBecause it is based on the same linear technology as the SBO 4 Compact blow molder, the greatest possible number of same functions and components have been incorporated into the SBO Compact™ Preferential Heating machine. The new blow molder enjoys the same industrial performance levels as the SBO 4 Compact and contains robust kinematics and simple mechanics to ensure reliability. It also demonstrates the same heating and stretching-blowing precision as high-speed Sidel machines, which makes it ideal for the production of the most demanding bottles.The SBO Compact™ Preferential Heating machine has also benefited from the Sidel Group’s R&D efforts to provide options that meet specific market needs. For instance, in early 2009, an air recovery system will be available to provide a significant decrease in high-pressure air consumption. A neck orientation option will also be made available for this machine.Preferential HeatingThe preferential heating process is ideal when the ratio between the large and small sides of a package is greater than 1.4. Selective heating of the preform is done via a system of reflectors that generate successive zones of shadow and reflection, thus ensuring that heat distribution perfectly matches the bottle design requirements. In addition, continuous control of preform transfer enables its specific orientation to be maintained as it makes its way to the blow molding step. The preferential heating process ensures identical stretching on opposite faces, with perfect control of thickness. Thanks to its wide process window, highly precise adjustments can be made to obtain the best possible temperature profile for maximum angular precision of the preform in the mold and to ensure optimum quality for the bottle

Sylvie ORY

Tel: +33 2 32 85 81 33

Fax: +33 2 32 85 81 34

sylvie.ory@sidel.com