Graham blow molding machine meets pandemic demand for wipes packaging

Graham Engineering’s Mighty 11 rotary wheel extrusion blow molding (EBM) system — normally used to produce quart oil containers — now also is helping meet demand for sanitizing wipes. 

“We have a current project where we are building the largest in the world EBM system producing canisters for the wipes industry,” said Mike Duff, VP of sales and service. “Based on the 44 cavities and the production rate, that would be the highest output of any EBM system that any other OEM could produce. Although this is not a new technology, it certainly is pertinent to the times.” 

Using the Mighty 11 to produce HDPE canisters for wipes isn’t unprecedented. The company sold a machine for a similar application about 10 years ago, he said. However, interest in the machine for wipes packaging has been growing over the past year because of the pandemic. 

The Mighty 11 is a tri-layer, dual-parison machine with 44 cavities (22 per wheel). It can produce 11,800 bottles per hour. The new machine for the wipes customer will make industry-standard canisters. Weight variation between the cavities is within 1.25 percent. 

For the EBM process, that’s very tight process control, he said. 

The Mighty 11 operates at 95 percent production efficiency or greater. That means 95 percent or more of the bottles produced meet specifications.  

The system comes equipped with Graham Engineering’s proprietary XBM Navigator PC-based control. It uses Beckhoff hardware and an industrial-hardened PC loaded with the full documentation of the machine, which the operator can view through the HMI. 

The Mighty 11, because of its high output, is a perfect fit for the booming sanitary wipes market, Duff said. 

“Given the pandemic, people are looking for increased production capacity,” he said. “This gives them the capacity to meet the needs of the current marketplace. There was a huge rush on wipes last year, and at the beginning of the summer, things kind of waned a little bit. But now, with the CDC coming out with new warnings about the pandemic, demand is way up again. This fits some of those scenarios where producers of the wipes need a large quantity of canisters to fill.” 

The Mighty 11 also is highly energy efficient. 

“From an energy standpoint, the wheel platform is designed as a hybrid, and because of that, it uses — depending on how you measure it — 40 to 60 percent less than a conventional shuttle machine,” Duff said. 

While the Mighty 11 is the biggest rotary wheel EBM system Graham Engineering offers, the company also is supplying a second, smaller unit for the packaging of sanitary wipes. The MVP 16 rotary blow molding system is equipped with 32 cavities, and at the time of our interview, Graham was producing one for a customer packaging sanitary wipes. 

Contact

Graham Engineering Corp., York, Pa., 717-848-3755, www.grahamengineering.com/home.htm