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Glueless production of disposable syringes
2/29/2012 |
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In association with the companies Engel of A-4311 Schwertberg and Transcoject of D-24539 Neumünster, ZAHORANSKY will display a fully automated system for the glueless production of disposable syringes at the upcoming Medtec event in Stuttgart.
To achieve absolute success, ZAHORANSKY developed a highly efficient needle feeding system (NFS) capable of separating as many as 400 needles per minute. Once separated, a custom servo driven linear robot places singulated needles into an injection mould (Optionally, needles are first aligned prior to being placed into the mould). Once in the mould, needles are then sheathed with a high-grade technical polymer, usually COC (cyclo-olefin-copolymer).
The glueless production of syringes is an absolute novelty, considering that well over 95 % of all cannulas are still to this day assembled with glue - and mostly in countries abroad using manual labor.
The process steps in detail:
The NFS system singulars needles in batches of 16 using a slide plate at the feeder magazine. The dual axis linear robot then transfers the singulated needles to the pickup plate for mould insert position match and then finally to the ejector-side of the mould cavities.
Simultaneous with the insertion phase, the previously injected parts are removed at the nozzle-side mould half by a 6-axes articulated robot made by Engel. This dual process substantially reduces cycle time because both in-feed and removal functions take place in parallel. The glass-like COC polymer is then injected via a Ewikon hot runner system with needle valve nozzles. Due to the nature of the plastic material, the cavity inserts are heated, while the rest of the mould is cooled as usual. In order to achieve this, the inserts are thermally separated from the mould to minimize loss of energy and to accomplish a rapid thermal equilibrium in the system.
Laser units check the needle in-feed and the sheathed needles for completeness. The finished syringe bodies can then be siliconized on an integrated downstream station to improve the sliding ability of the needles. Finally, the overmoulded and inspected needles can be automatically packaged, ensuring that no particle contamination by human hands occurred during the entire process chain.
The functioning automated production line in clean room design can be seen at the Medtec in Stuttgart at the Engel stand 4415 in Hall 4 running on an Engel Emotion 200-100T injection mould tool.
Website: www.zahoransky-group.com |
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