Wexxar: Sustainability in machinery initiatives
Wexxar has implemented a number of initiatives for the company's equipment that relates to sustainability, according to, Melvin Tsen, Engineering Manager - Wexxar Products:
Plastic Corrugated RSC
Wexxar(www.wexxar.com), powered by Pro Mach, developed and tested a concept for automatic erecting and tape sealing of plastic corrugated RSC. This container design was intended for reusability throughout the end user’s supply chain.
Reusable Plastic Container
An iPAK machine (RP-100) was designed to automatically erect collapsible plastic trays. The collapsed trays are stored and automatically pulled from integrated magazines. This container design was intended for reusability throughout the end user’s supply chain.
Power Save Mode
Some of our Wexxar and BEL machinery are equipped with a Power Save Mode. This feature improves energy consumption by powering down motors after a period of inactivity.
Replacing pneumatic actuators with electric actuators
Due to the inherent inefficiencies of compressed air generation and distribution, two high volume pneumatic actuators were replaced with electric servo actuators on the Wexxar WF30 case erector. The use of electro mechanical drives not only improved machine performance, but also reduced air consumption by more than 30% compared to previous WF generations.
Another benefit of using servo actuators is the ability to effectively handle corrugated with higher recycled content. The servo’s closed loop control system automatically adjusts to variances in corrugated quality, and produces a precise motion profile allowing gentler motion -yet maintaining throughput.
OnSite Valve Technology
The new generation of Wexxar WF20 & WF30 case erector will include the OnSite Valve technology. Significant volumes of air is stored in long tubing lengths –requiring wasted energy to compress and move this air through the tubes before actual work is done at the pneumatic cylinder. Compressing and moving this air also takes away valuable time from box forming processes.
OnSite Valve relocates the pneumatic control valves to within inches of the corresponding pneumatic actuator -eliminating significant amounts of tubing compared to the centrally located valve bank previously used. The air flow efficiency though the shorter tubing also allows use of smaller, lower flow valves -right sized to each actuator. The shorter tubing and smaller valves require less flow and allows more time to be available for the actuation process, improving energy efficiency (uses 30% less air) and machine performance.