Taiwan is one of the nations that heeded the call to be more earth-friendly when it comes to manufacturing particularly in its plastic and rubber industry. Very timely indeed as global awareness on environmental issues continues to rise with particular interest on how manufacturing practices can be made more efficient, produce less harmful wastes and be energy efficient in order not to harm Mother Nature.
Last May 6, 2021, in the webinar “Shaping Tomorrow, Discovering Taiwan Plastic & Rubber Machinery”, 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), five leading Taiwanese companies shared their advanced manufacturing technologies. 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.
Mr. Bush Hsieh, Vice Chairman of the Plastic and Rubber Machinery Committee of the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI) remarked that as one of the top six plastics and rubber machinery exporting countries in the world, Taiwan is recognized for its advanced technologies and top-quality after-sales services. With the collaborative efforts of the government and the industries, the Taiwanese machinery industry still performed well during the post-COVID-19 era.
As mentioned, the webinar was joined by five leading Taiwanese companies. Each shared advanced manufacturing technologies still with Mother Nature in mind.
Ms. Celina Lin, Sales Representative, Allen Plastic Industries Co., Ltd., showcased her company’s Horizontal Shrink Sleeving Machine (AHL-1000), suitably designed for shrink container sizes from a diameter of 8mm up to 30mm, perfect for products such as lipsticks, eyeliners, and eyebrow pencils. She also introduced 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.
Mr. Tony Wu, Sales Support Engineer, ChumPower Machinery Corp. presented ChumPower’s High-speed Stretch Blow Molding Machine, which can produce 24,000 bottles per hour. It has three special features, the first being able to use lightweight preform. The lightest bottle is 200ml and weighs just 4.3g, which not only saves USD 300,000 worth or raw materials cost but also 14% heating energy. Second, its 38mm pitch heating oven allows more preforms to be heated at once compared to a 50mm system and provides 33% more space efficiency in heating all the preforms. Third, it uses an air recovery system that 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%.
Mr. Hank Wu, Sales Manager, Fu Chun Shin Machinery Manufacture Co., Ltd. (FCS) emphasized 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. Part of Mr. Wu’s presentation was also the iMF 4.0 (Intelligent ManuFactory) that can be mounted on the injection molding machines. It can also independently adjust and control quality parameters based on the surrounding information. It comes with water flow and a melt viscosity control system that helps 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 the SOP to unify the standard mold change time/cycle time and ensure efficiency.
Mr. David Wu, General Manager, Multiplas Enginery Co. Ltd. for his part, presented the Fully Automatic Production Cell - Unman Screwdriver Production Line. It 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 that include 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 for customers worldwide in the electrical, automotive, and sports industries with amazing results. Multiplas’s clients include Bosch, Black & Decker, Johnson & Johnson, 3M, Panasonic, Hitachi, Daikin, Foxconn, Asus, Nike, and Callaway, among others.
Lastly, Mr. David Lo, CMO, Polystar Machinery Co. Ltd. stated that the development of the recycling business has become more important as manufacturing companies continued to be made aware of the value of global environmental protection. The topic of his talk, "Recycling Made Simple," is to help businesses become aware of the "Circular Economy." The clean post-industrial/factory films waste can be fed into its Repro-Flex machine to produce superior-quality recycled pellets, then mixed with virgin material to reproduce a more stable product and save new material purchasing costs, reduce wastes, and help 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 uses an advanced automatic melt filter for the best filtration efficiency, which can be used to process post-consumer waste such as paper labels, dirty grease, dust and more.
Aside from coming up with these impressive plastic and rubber machinery solutions, Taiwan relied on effective communication to grow their industries 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 help the world. Find more anti-epidemic product providers at https://www.anticovid19tw.org.