Hot Plate Welder
Customer Request:
A client came to us looking for a solution to weld two plastic parts together in a cycle time of 30 seconds.
Challenges:
1. Two different plastics to bond together (Hose Material -Santoprene / Tube Material - Polypropylene Homopolymer)
Different plastics have different melting points and characteristics causing it very hard to weld the two parts together in a clean manner.
2. Cycle time of 30 seconds to load parts, weld together assembly and off load assembly:
The client had two injection mold machines making the hoses and tubes with a cycle time of 30 seconds. Our welding machine had to match or exceed this cycle time to ensure no bottle neck in production.
Hot Plate Welder Solution:
We worked together with our client to come up with a unique hot plate welder custom design for them. We designed, programmed and manufacture all components in house allowing us to be very flexible with our client’s requests.
To overcome the different plastic materials, we installed two hot plates. These two plates allowed us to control the temperature of the two plastics individually, maximining efficiency and reducing waste.
We worked with our designer and programmer to optimize the cycle time, allowing us to accomplish the 30 seconds cycle time. We performed a cycle time analysis to ensure that one (1) operator would be able to perform the task in 30 seconds. The operator had 5 seconds to install the rubber hose on the lower nest and 5 seconds to load the plastic tube on the upper spring-loaded nest. The machine had 15 seconds to melt the two parts to a specific temperature and bond them together. The operator then had 5 seconds to remove the completed assembly and placed it in a box.
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