Sidel has launched its latest quality control technology for PET bottles, IntelliADJUST, a smart bottle blowing control system using interferometric sensor technology for consistently higher bottle quality.
IntelliADJUST is a Sidel patented solution which guarantees consistent quality and high efficiency. It works within a ‘closed loop’ system with interferometric sensor technology, and ensures perfect material distribution, resulting in high production uniformity for PET bottles, including those made from recycled PET.
It also enables consistent bottle quality across a range of variable production conditions, such as preform storage, workshop temperature and relative humidity. In-line, autonomous bottle control and real-time digitised process adjustments result in perfect material distribution. The impact of changing production conditions and PET resin specificities on bottle quality is significantly reduced when using this expert-free solution.
The addition of Sidel’s Evo-ON software suite, offers aggregation of equipment data and dynamic analytics features to deploy historical and 24/7 real-time analysis, creating a truly smart line system.
Sidel product manager Stéphane Menard, said that IntelliADJUST measures in-line bottle thickness, analyses and adjusts parameters to ensure consistent quality.
“This easy-to-use blowing solution, maximises the number of marketable bottles by ensuring that quality control is consistently high. IntelliADJUST offsets any production line variations by using algorithms to identify measured thickness deviations and automatically corrects the heating and blowing parameters to ensure consistent quality without any interruptions,” said Menard.
Low carbon footprint packaging
The blow moulding process is becoming more important as the drive for ultimate light weighting and increasing the amount of rPET content within the industry continues.
IntelliADJUST is 100 per cent reliable across a wide range of PET preforms including translucent, opaque, coloured (non-TiO2), virgin and up to 100 per cent rPET. It is particularly valuable in helping customers who want to introduce rPET as there are multiple sources of supply and therefore more variability in material grades. The system is capable of securing perfect material distribution on the bottle despite resin variability risks.
Sidel’s new technology offers the opportunity to fully optimise the carbon footprint of their PET packaging, not only through enabling greater use of recycled material but by supporting weight reduction, all with stabilised quality across bottles.
Smart sensor technology
IntelliADJUST regulates the main blowing and heating process parameters to avoid uneven distribution of material, while its advanced measurement functionality also ensures consistently high bottle quality.
Working within a continuous closed loop process for control and adjustment, IntelliADJUST takes high-precision wall thickness measurements at the most representative points of each bottle, using four interferometric sensors based on reflected infrared light. Four sensors, located at the bottle transfer wheel, can be adjusted across three axes (X, Y, and Z).
It can operate at speeds of up to 90000 bottles per hour, continuously comparing thickness measurements with the expected material distribution, and automatically adjust the process in case of deviation.
With advanced capabilities, IntelliADJUST is also easy-to-use and reliable. All IntelliADJUST parameters are directly integrated into the machine settings for each stock keeping unit (SKU) recipe. The calibration-free system allows immediate start-up after changeovers by automatically adapting sensor positioning and processes according to each recipe, and its high accuracy reduces the need for additional manual laboratory controls.
