As a nation whose industries are fully focused on production efficiency and smart technologies, count Taiwan to be more aware of protecting Mother Earth by promoting environment-friendly manufacturing processes.
This effort was made more evident as Taiwan’s rubber and plastics industry heeded the call of creating robust manufacturing output and at the same time promote energy and production efficiency through smart manufacturing technologies among Taiwanese rubber and plastics companies that they can showcase to the world.
Just recently, Taiwan held the “Shaping Tomorrow, Discovering Taiwan Plastic & Rubber Machinery” webinar on May 6, 2021, which was organized by the Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT), MOEA, Taiwan, R.O.C., and the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), in conjunction with Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI). The event focused on the capabilities of five leading Taiwanese companies in the rubber and plastics industry, the state-of-the-art smart technologies they used to make their production processes more efficient, including the recycling rates of their plastic wastes. These leading Taiwanese companies include Allen Plastic, ChumPower, Fu Chun Shin, Multiplas and Polystar.
Bush Hsieh, currently the Vice Chairman and will soon be Chairman of the Plastic and Rubber Machinery Committee, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI) said that as one of the top six plastics and rubber machinery exporting countries in the world, Taiwan is renowned the world over for its advanced technologies and top-quality after-sales services. With the effective collaboration between the government and the industries, the Taiwanese machinery industry managed to perform well during the post-COVID-19 period. Recent statistics revealed that Taiwan’s machinery industry export value reached US$2.9 billion in March 2021, or about 30.7% increase compared to figures in the same period last year.
Celina Lin, Sales Representative, Allen Plastic Industries Co., Ltd. showcased the Horizontal Shrink Sleeving Machine (AHL-1000), which is suitable for shrink container sizes from a diameter of 8mm up to 30mm, perfect for products like lipsticks, eyeliners, and eyebrow pencils. The machine can also be positioned in just 0.5 seconds owing to its highly accurate rotary positioning system. She also introduced the Automatic Shrink Sleeving Machine (ASL-1000 and ASL-2000) that easily integrates with clients' existing packaging lines and is ideal for making bottles of various widths and label positions.
Tony Wu, Sales Support Engineer, ChumPower Machinery Corp. presented its High-speed Stretch Blow Molding Machine that can produce 24,000 bottles per hour. It has three special features with the first being to use lightweight preform. The lightest bottle is 200ml and weighs just 4.3g, which saves USD 300,000 worth or raw materials cost and saves 14% on heating energy. It also uses a 38mm pitch heating oven so that more preforms can be heated simultaneously compared to a 50mm system, making it 33% more space efficient. It also uses an air recovery system where instead of venting out completely into the atmosphere, part of it can be redirected to a recovery tank and stored for other usage. The rest of the bottle air is then discharged safely into the environment to help achieve a recovery rate of up to 15%.
Hank Wu, Sales Manager, Fu Chun Shin Machinery Manufacture Co., Ltd. (FCS) stressed that FCS has increased the servo motor output of its FA series from 57kw to 71.9 kw, optimized the system pressure "160 Bar" to improve the injection response, increased the platen size by 10.7% and reinforced the strength of the platen by 30% so that customers can run FCS’s machines on more applications. He also introduced the iMF 4.0 (Intelligent ManuFactory) that can be mounted on the injection molding machines and can independently adjust and control quality parameters based on the surrounding information. It comes with water flow and a melt viscosity control system so it can monitor the correct water volume and flow and the correct viscosity on different cavities, which automatically compensate for the short shot and flash. This system can also record the time spent by different operators so that managers can determine and unify the standard mold change time/cycle time and stabilize efficiency.
David Wu, General Manager, Multiplas Enginery Co. Ltd. introduced the Fully Automatic Production Cell – Unman Screwdriver Production Line, which integrates vertical/horizontal injection molding machines, the 6-axis robot, and auxiliary machines for a fully automated production. As the leading total solution provider, Multiplas offers versatile molding solutions including Vertical Injection Molding, Micro Injection Molding, Multi-Color Injection Molding, and more. Also, it deploys its own technology to develop a smart injection molding system designed for reputable customers in the electrical, automotive, and sports industries worldwide. Multiplas clients include Bosch, Black & Decker, Johnson & Johnson, 3M, Panasonic, Hitachi, Daikin, Foxconn, Asus, Nike, and Callaway, to name a few.
Finally, David Lo, CMO, Polystar Machinery Co. Ltd. stated that the development of the recycling business has become more important due to demands of global environmental protection among manufacturing companies. He shared the topic "Recycling Made Simple" to help businesses perform the "Circular Economy." The clean post-industrial/factory films waste can be fed into its Repro-Flex machine to get superior-quality recycled pellets. These can then be mixed with virgin material to reproduce a more stable product and save new material purchasing costs and reduce wastes, and also increase output by as much as 20% while lowering power consumption by 10%. The applicable processing material includes PE/PP film rolls, bag scraps, stretch/shrink and bubble film sheets and Polystar’s Repro-ONE can even process solid structures (woven sacks/raffia/tape) and hard-to-regrind material. The power consumption is only 0.28~0.35 kw/kg on average and the Repro-PLUS comes with an advanced automatic melt filter to perform with the best filtration efficiency, which can be used to process post-consumer waste such as paper labels, dirty grease, dust and more.
The event attracted more than 284 people who all registered online, with 176 peak concurrent viewers, and 563 views from countries such as Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam, UK, Nigeria, Malaysia, Russia, and many others.
Aside from coming up with these impressive plastic and rubber machinery solutions, Taiwan relied on effective communication as they grow the business while helping fight Covid-19. The country came up with a dedicated website where it shared its experience and expertise in fighting Covid-19 and prevent its further spread. The website features some of Taiwan’s most advanced and state-of-the-art epidemic prevention measures and smart technologies to fight the virus and show how industries from Taiwan helps the world. Find more anti-epidemic product providers at https://www.anticovid19tw.org.
Watch out for TAITRA’s upcoming event, “TaipeiPLAS,” which will be held from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2, 2021, so please visit https://www.taipeiplas.com.tw/