As indispensable daily commodities, plastic bags play an important role in product packaging. High-quality plastic bags offer not only durability, protection, insulation, and frost resistance, but also preserve freshness, retain moisture, and more. Plastic bags are widely suited for packaging food such as vegetables, fruits, and beverages, as well as medical equipment, and liquid products. Bag blowers are used to manufacture plastic bags, which heat up and melt plastic particles as raw ingredients, and then blow the plastic into films. After the films cool down, they can be rolled up into finished products. With the increasing demands for high-quality plastic packaging supplies, packaging industries strive to develop a production pattern that can quickly mass produce and retain stable quality to fulfill the market's demands. In recent years, with the intellectualization and digitalization of factories, smart factory management has become a necessity. Conventional equipment is being upgraded with automation devices to optimize manufacturing processes that can lower labor costs, save energy, and raise production efficiency of the bag blowing processes.
A film blower contains several process techniques, including extrusion, film blowing, cooling, thickness inspection, cutting, unloading and coiling. Conventional film blowers use induction motors for the driving mechanism, which can consume much power during operation. In addition, with the lack of temperature control technology, it is hard for a machine to precisely detect temperature changes to the heating mechanism. If plastic particles are heated unevenly, it will cause inconsistent quality in the thickness of the plastic bags. Heaters usually require high-power operation to retain equipment temperatures.
For optimizing the bag blowing process, Delta has developed the three-layer bag blower machine that is equipped with vector control AC motor drives for driving motors. Matched with a variable-frequency control, the operating capacity of motors can be flexibly adjusted based on production conditions, avoiding unnecessary power consumption. In addition, to meet the demand for heating control, Delta's temperature controllers provide accurate temperature control capabilities to help heating equipment precisely retain required operating temperatures, which can assure the consistent quality of plastic bags, as well as prevent the constant high-power operation from a wide range of temperature drops. This three-layer bag blowing solution helps enhance stability, energy-savings, and high-capacity operation by providing an industry upgrade for manufacturers.
A bag blowing machine consists of two major parts: a bag blowing station, and a coiling station. For the technical structure of the bag blowing processes, Delta's three-layer bag blowing solution adopts the Hot Swappable Mid-range PLC AH Series and the Compact Modular Mid-range PLC AS Series for program control of the bag blowing station and the coiling station. The solution also adopts the Heavy Duty Vector Control Drive CH2000 Series to provide stable driving capability for extrusion, bag blowing, unloading and coiling processes, meeting the demands of the production line.
For the automated processing of the bag blowing machine, the Compact Modular Mid-range PLC AS Series sends commands to the machine, and the Heavy Duty Vector Control Drive CH2000 Series starts to drive the extrusion equipment to deliver raw materials to the bag blowing station. During delivery, the ring-shaped film blower blows the heated raw material into a film. The film is naturally cooled down by air, and the film thickness is measured at the same time to ensure product quality. During heating, the Advanced Intelligent Temperature Controller DT3 Series utilizes PID control to monitor the entire heating operation of the plastic particles, achieving precise control of temperature parameters. Once the films are sent to the coiling station, the film tensions are controlled by the reels' reception speed to complete the coiling task. The two coiling stations are equipped with the Unmanaged Ethernet Switches DVS Series to transmit production information via EtherNet/IP communication to the Hot Swappable Mid-range PLC AH Series at the blowing station. Operators can monitor in real-time and adjust the manufacturing processes through the Large-Size HMI DOP-W Series, achieving high-flexibility automated processes.
In actual application, Delta's three-layer bag blowing solution brings the following advantages to our clients:
·Human machine interface monitoring for flexible parameter setup: Users can easily monitor the bag blowing and coiling processes with the human machine interfaces, and easily adjust parameters such as the temperature of heating equipment, plastic bag thickness, and coiling speed, to achieve flexible production monitoring.
·Various equipment structures for flexible expansion: The main controller AH Series is equipped in the master station to integrate data from all equipment into a database. This production data can be used with an industrial graphic control system for production monitoring. In addition, Delta's controller supports various functional modules and customers can flexibly expand controller functions based on their demands for a variety of applications in the production line.
·One stop solution for saving cost: Delta's three-layer bag blowing solution integrates into a customer's existing production line to provide an industrial upgrade without requiring equipment replacement. In addition, the workstation is equipped with a bundle of Delta's automation products for high compatibility, as well as easy maintenance and integration. Customers only need to shop at one stop to build a perfect automated production line.
Delta provides the three-layer bag blowing solution to upgrade conventional production equipment for high-efficiency and the standardized mass production of plastic packaging products, achieving stability, energy-savings, and high-capability operations.