Jomar, a manufacturer of injection blow molding (IBM) machinery for the pharmaceutical, healthcare, and household products industries, will soon launch the TechnoDrive 65 PET machine. The IBM machine is specifically made to run PET resins but is designed to still switch back to more typical materials for injection blow molding such as polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE).
The TechnoDrive 65 PET machine evolved from Jomar’s TechnoDrive 65, which is designed to be a high-speed IBM production machine that was unveiled in 2017. It is meant to have a dry cycle time of 1.7 sec. The machine’s ability has been tested in running 50ml perfume bottles in clear PET on a six-cavity mold.
Using the original TechnoDrive platform as the base, Jomar engineers expanded its capabilities by adding a more robust plastifier motor, high-pressure valves, built-in nozzle heaters to aid in the processing of PET, and other parts. The result is a machine designed specifically to process a range of PET grades, but also meant to revert to more common resins such as polyolefins by changing the screw and making some minor adjustments.
Some IBM machines require a fourth station to process PET, to and ensure they are the correct temperature before enveloping the rod in PET. The Jomar TechnoDrive 65 PET conditions the core rods in the ejection station in order to manipulate the core rod temperature within a faster cycle time.
The TechnoDrive 65 PET is made to mold a variety of shapes and sizes in PET. One of the limitations, however, is rooted in the nature of injection blow molding. Unlike injection stretch blow machines, an IBM machine does not mechanically extend its core rods, which provides biaxial orientation and allows for extremely thin walls like those found in water or carbonated soft drink (CSD) bottles.
The average wall thickness for a TechnoDrive 65 PET bottle in PET is about one millimeter, which makes it more suitable to mold jars, vials, and bottles for the pharmaceutical or cosmetic industries rather than the beverage industry.
All PET projects for the TechnoDrive 65 PET should have the ability to be accepted as a turnkey project where Jomar would build both the machine and mold, which provides the company with a wider processing window for better success during the process.
