At drupa 2016, the modular Xtend³ gluing and quality assurance system and the new DPP8 double-piston pump from Baumer hhs celebrated their world premieres. Since then, many of these systems have been installed at customers worldwide, where they have proven themselves in practical use. Now Baumer hhs has expanded their functionality.
Customers, whether they produce packaging for pharmaceutical, food, cosmetic or consumer products, for beverages or other goods, continue to up their demands on the quality and efficiency of their production processes. Baumer hhs has responded by continuously advancing its glue application and quality assurance solutions for packaging production and other sectors by offering a stream of new technologies giving its customers every opportunity to master the challenges of the market.
Two examples of recent innovations are the modular Xtend³ system for glue application and associated quality assurance as well as the new DPP8 double-piston pump. “The Xtend³ control units are a logical development of the successful Xtend² series. Xtend³ covers the latest industry requirements and is open to future developments. Packaging manufacturers must be able to cover an increasingly broad range of products and efficiently produce ever smaller batch sizes – and thus set completely new demands on their production systems. The Xtend3 series meets these higher demands,” says Baumer hhs Managing Director Percy Dengler.
Today, customers all over the world benefit from the special ease of use of Xtend³ systems. The innovative operating concept with multi-touch technology allows them to achieve the highest level of flexibility with the shortest set-up times, which are a key factor in profitability, especially for small batch sizes. The response from customers who now use Xtend³ controllers is correspondingly positive. The advanced information management, with short help videos which guide machine operators through the setting up of application heads and sensors, has also proved its worth.
Xtend³ now also monitors adhesive applications with elaborate glue patterns such as glue lines applied as lines or dots, in the production of bottle carriers / six packs for the beverage industry. As a two-camera system, Xtend³ controls up to 40 glue beads per camera on a width of 400 mm as well as the areas in which no glue may be applied. In addition, the two-camera system now offers the possibility to check folds of tabs. Thanks to the graphical user interface, the cameras or the glue patterns can be adjusted intuitively. The operators can assign the settings to the individual jobs and recall them at any time in case of repeat jobs.
The new working principle and the improved features of the innovative double-piston pump DPP-8 for the adhesive application systems from Baumer hhs are also proving their worth in the market. The new electronic control allows precise pressure control at all production speeds, resulting in the pumps not needing a material pressure regulator. The new pumps always produce only the currently required pressure and thus a constant flow rate. As a result, they handle the adhesives more gently and therefore are not effecting the viscosity provided by the adhesive manufacturers.
In addition, the new double piston pumps are very robust. They require little maintenance and have extended diagnostics options. Added to this is their ease of use – the machine operators can quickly record all operating conditions. Meanwhile, the functionality of controlling the DPP8 pumps has been extended and now measures the glue consumption +/- 5% per job – a useful function for the post-calculation and the preparation of follow-up orders.
The analysis capabilities of the Xtend³ control systems has also been expanded. In addition to the standard statistical protocols in PDF or CSV format, they now provide additional data for higher-level evaluation. In doing so, they are increasingly taking account of the topic of Industry 4.0 and providing the basis for future process optimization.
Xtend³ – the complete system for your business
