SMART: A New Era in Rotational Moulding

Unmatched rotational product quality in half the cycle time

 

Persico Industrial, a company already known for innovation in Rotational Moulding, has now developed a brand-new technology called SMART (Simple, Maintenance Friendly, Affordable, Reliable, Time-to-market).

Simple, yet flexible, SMART is the best rotational moulding system available today for the manufacture of:

• Very high-quality rotational parts in medium-sized quantities
• A wide range of Rotational moulded products on the same machine
• High-tech parts requiring close tolerances or complex geometries

What’s more, SMART is the ideal choice for:

• researchers who want to experiment with new rotomoulding materials and moulding conditions
• Newcomers to the field of rotational moulding who want user-friendly implementation

SMART Design Objectives

SMART, an alternative to Persico’s standard Leonardo system, has been designed with the following goals in mind:

• To achieve greater flexibility
• To reduce investment costs

At the same time, SMART technology has incorporated the fundamental objectives of the Leonardo system:

• To eliminate both the conventional oven and cooling chamber
• To guarantee consistent parts moulded under optimal conditions

SMART Technology Highlights

Unlike conventional rotomoulding systems that are controlled merely by preset times, SMART monitors and controls the air temperature inside the mould continuously throughout the process, so that:

• Heating and cooling times are automatically adjusted to the changing surrounding conditions
• The moulded parts are always consistentand high quality

SMART has a compact footprint, because loading, heating, cooling and unloading can all take place in the same area.

Each aluminium mould is heated by numerous electrical heating elements housed in grooves on the moulds outer surface. The heated surface is divided into 18 or 24 independently and continuously monitored temperature control zones.

SMART Advantages

SMART’s innovative features lead to the following benefits:

• Energy savings of up to 30% (heat is supplied only to the mould).
• Practically instantaneous daily startup even without the operator’s presence (no oven preheat and no gas burner to be monitored).
• Much shorter heating cycles than in the traditional process (mould temperature can be increased rapidly).
• Excellent wall thickness uniformity is possible (the same temperature can be obtained at each point of the mould’s inner surface, even in the case of double walls).
• Walls with different thicknesses are also feasible (a different temperature can be set for each mould control zone).
• Less deformation and reduced weight of the moulded part, in addition to shorter cycle times and less raw material used (up to 30% less, depending on the geometry).
• Moulds on the same arm can operate at completely different temperatures, in contrast to the conventional process.
• A wide range of materials can be processed, including materials sensitive to oxidation such as PA6 (the desired gas can be used inside the mould); high-temperature resistant engineering plastics such as PC, ECTFE, PVDF, PEEK (surface temperatures up to 350°C can be reached); and crosslinkable PE (just the right amount of crosslinking is always attained). The following photo shows a complex polycarbonate item produced with SMART:

 

To read more about SMART, please click here.