Urola brings all-electric rotary blow molder to U.S.

By Bruce Geiselman 

Urola Solutions, a blow molding machine manufacturer based in Legazpi, Spain, has launched sales in the U.S. of a new, all-electric rotary extrusion blow molding machine. 

The first SWT machine was manufactured for a customer in Mexico. Urola Solutions installed it and had it running in March. The energy-efficient machine has a single head, is 100 percent electric and can provide considerable savings in the weight of the container, according to the company. 

The SWT, which stands for Smart Wheel Tangential, features a tangential arrangement of the molds on the rotary wheel, thus allowing for the creation of different shaped containers, the company said. 

“The SWT is the all-electric upgrade to the previous MT series,” said Dale Luster, Urola Solutions area manager for the U.S. and Canada.  

The MT series, which has been discontinued, had a similar design, but operated hydraulically. The MT series was available from 1990 to 2013. 

The all-electric design eliminates the use of hydraulic oil, meaning the machine is suitable for use in clean-room applications, Luster said. In addition, it is energy-efficient. 

“It allowed us to achieve 0.25 to 0.26 kilowatt hours per kilo processed, which is very, very efficient,” Luster said. 

It represents about a 25 percent improvement in energy efficiency over a comparable machine in the MT series. 

Currently, one model of the SWT is available — a 14-station machine featuring either 14 single-cavity molds or 14 neck-to-neck molds. The neck-to-neck, two-cavity setup simultaneously blows two bottles. The needle blow action occurs at the junction of the two bottles’ necks.  

The machine features 5 tons of clamping force per station. The unit excels in producing thin-wall containers and containers with handles, Luster said. A servo motor carries out adjustments to the parison, which result in precise electronic control of the parison. 

A camera examines the bottles as they come out of the blow molding system. 

“The camera automatically recognizes and ejects containers at [machine] start up,” Luster said. “It’s sort of a pass-fail camera so that you know when it’s time to start saving bottles after the start up.” 

Bottles that fail the inspection automatically are kicked onto a conveyor and scrapped, he said.  

Operators have easy access to the extruder head for maintenance, and they can rotate or roll the extruder into a convenient maintenance position, Luster said.  

The machine's HMI can store recipes and help guide the operator through step-by-step start-up instructions.  

A two-person crew can complete changeovers within one eight-hour shift, including changes to HMI settings, die tooling, molds, extractor and typical downstream processes, Luster said.  

The machine includes sensors and cloud monitoring that allow for remote assessments and predictive maintenance. Both customers and Urola diagnosticians in Spain can access the data to identify and correct problems. 

With single-cavity molds, the machine can produce containers as large as 2 liters at up to 6,500 bottles per hour. In a neck-to-neck configuration, it can produce containers ranging in size from 100 milliliters up to a half-liter at rates up to 12,000 bottles per hour. 

Bruce Geiselman, senior staff reporter

[email protected]

Urola Solutions, St. Louis, 314-705-1999, https://urolanorthamerica.com/