7500kN structural foam moulding, wide-platen press will nearly double a company's capacity with twin-mold processing, half the cycle time, 2400 lb/h production and, 250,000 unit a year output.

Venezuela's largest structural foam molder, Industrias Uniplasticas, has ordered an advanced, high-output Uniloy Milacron press to continue 100% per year sales growth for plastics pallets. Uniplasticas, which promotes the plastics pallets as the 'intelligent solution', found the solution to capacity constraints by ordering a new 7500kN (750 tonf), wide-platen structural foam molding press at NPE. Scheduled for February, 2007 delivery, the multimillion-dollar machine will quadruple production output over older presses currently used to mold the high-strength, long-life returnable shipping and storage pallets.

The wide platen allows the press to mount and run two molds side by side, doubling cavitation, said Ed Hunerberg, executive director of Uniloy Milacron's structural foam machinery business, while a 500HP, 2400 lb/h, six-inch extruder provides a 200-pound shot capacity.

Cycle times will be more than halved with the new machine, from 6 min to 2.5 min, as a result of improved mold technology, too.

'Taken together, this machine should produce four times more than one of their existing machines,' he said.

'It is good for 250,000 pallets per year.' Industrias Uniplasticas is a leading producer of industrial-strength plastics boxes, baskets, construction forms, pallets and poultry/agricultural flooring, said Ing Frank Adam Mendoza, commercial manager.

The company is the largest supplier of industrial pallets in Venezuela and Colombia, and also exports to Ecuador, Peru and Costa Rica.

Pallet sales have been doubling year-to-year for the past several years, he said, and the company's goal is to continue growth at that rate.

Sold under the Uniplast trade name, the company's storage and handling products are used by a large, blue-chip roster of international food, pharmaceutical, and personal products companies.

'There are few suppliers of structural foam machines, but only Uniloy Milacron has the resources of a large corporation behind it, and this weighed heavily in our decision, which has been under study for more than 18 months,' said Mendoza.

'Ed Hunerberg and his team have answered many questions for us, not the least of which, was how effective Uniloy would be in installing and supporting a machine in Venezuela.

Meetings with Uniloy structural-foam customers from South Africa to northern Ohio convinced us we were in good hands.' The 7500kN structural foam machine features a 167in wide x 86in tall platen with 137in between the tie-bars.

Uniloy Milacron structural foam presses offer some of the molding industry's most advanced and innovative technologies, according to Hunerberg.

These include: * multi-nozzle programmable, sequential injection with independent nozzle control.

* hot runner/manifold systems.

* highly sophisticated, but user-friendly machine controls and software.

As a low pressure process, structural foam molding makes possible extremely large platen sizes, mold daylight areas, projected mold areas and shot sizes, without attendant increases in clamp tonnage, he noted.

'We are able to produce part sizes that would not be economically viable on an injection molding press, even if you could build one big enough,' said Hunerberg.

'Our presses are being used to mold very large parts, even multiples - such as four 8ft x 4ft parts at the same time.

We offer machines with up to 400 lb shot size and 6000 lb/h output.' Uniplasticas produces the pallets using aluminum molds.

The low-pressure molding permits use of aluminum molds for cost savings of a third or more over tool steel, along with easier mold handling and higher efficiency cooling for faster cycles, said Hunerberg.