The CAP-TEC from Ferromatik Milacron is one of the new breed of customized machines designed for specific, demanding injection molding tasks. CAP-TEC is built for the beverage industry and produces caps and closures for bottles, cartons, tubes, and bags. It does nothing else, but it does that perfectly and under production conditions that meet the real-world needs of beverage companies. As we have already seen with the production of PET bottles, the production of closures is increasingly being done right at the bottling facility.

Screw closures are a true mass production item. The beverage industry alone accounts for many millions of these little parts each year. They weigh only a few grams, yet they require precision in their production if they are to fulfill their function reliably. The technical requirements for closures are greater than they may appear and the enormous quantities needed call for an economical and reliable manufacturing solution. Standard injection molding solutions just don’t measure up. Ferromatik Milacron’s CAP-TEC series – “Dedicated Solution for Caps” – provides that solution.

Priority Number One: Productivity

The CAP-TEC is built for high output. Along with speed, “high output” means superior reliability: in the just-in-time production systems in use today, downtime means unacceptable delays for the whole production chain.

The machine base comes from the proven K-TEC series, but has been stripped of everything not required for this specialized application. The clamping unit features a special short stroke design for small part sizes. That allows for a smaller overall machine footprint – saving valuable shop floor space. In contrast to standard injection molding machines, which have to accommodate a variety of different applications, the high performance hydraulics of the clamping unit are precisely attuned to the CAP-TEC’s dynamics and provide the fastest clamping force build up in the industry. The moving platen on the clamping unit moves on linear guide bearings. This keeps the tie-bars oil-free, a key production advantage in the food industry with its tight hygiene regulations.

The electric drive of the high-performance plasticizing unit allows for parallel functions contributing to the overall speed of the machine as well as making it more energy efficient. Using a 72-cavity mold to make typical thin-walled closures, such as those used with bottled water, CAP-TEC has an output of more than 100,000 parts per hour. For larger diameter parts, or parts with greater wall thicknesses, for example for carbonated beverages, output is also extremely high: anywhere from 60,000 to 80,000 parts per hour – depending on the characteristics of the part. If we take 8000 hours of running time for a year, that would mean an annual output of over 600 million parts.

In recent years, more and more beverage companies have moved their PET bottle production right into the bottling plant. For caps and closures the trend is the same.
With the CAP-TEC’s shorter base, Ferromatik Milacron has met a key need of bottlers: minimum floor space requirements. By providing a complete system from raw material conveyance to mold cooling, post-cooling and quality control of the finished parts the designers and applications engineers have gone several steps further.

Certainty, process reliability, and simplicity of operations are hard criteria in choosing an injection molding machine – all the more so when the operators may have little experience with this technology. Ferromatik Milacron has created a special safe-mode for the MOSAIC touch-screen control panel which brings all of the information and input options necessary for normal machine operations together in a single screen page.