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On January 26, 2004, Moldflow announced the acquisition of American MSI Corporation of Moorpark, CA. Founded in 1984, American MSI Corporation pioneered real-time industrial temperature control systems using the PC or personal computer as a platform. In the 20 years since its inception, the company had earned critical acclaim for meeting the unique, and sometimes very complex, requirements of over 3,000 of the world’s leading manufacturers.
The acquisition of American MSI represents a key step in Moldflow’s longer term strategy to provide solutions that optimize the entire plastics injection molding process from the early product design stages, through mold design, material selection and process optimization. The hot runner control technology developed by American MSI is the last function to assure that the material is kept in an optimal molten state until it is injected into the cavity of the mold. Moldflow will now be able to provide an end-to-end solution that optimizes flow and temperature control, resulting in higher yields, reduced cycle times and better part quality.
Altanium is the industry’s first and only modular, small footprint hot runner control solution that can support from one to 384 zones. Its unique, modular control units can be used freestanding, mounted on the mold or mounted alongside, behind or even inside the injection molding machine.
Moldflow’s new, affordable Altanium C-Series features a control mainframe that can be mounted directly onto a mold’s junction box, eliminating the need for expensive power and thermocouple cables and freeing up valuable floor space. The Altanium CM provides unequaled value for integrated, multi-zone temperature control.
Altanium features advanced technology for autoslaving, boost control, standby management, mold diagnostics and data collection. It offers the highest degree of temperature control accuracy for existing and future low-mass nozzles with user selectable phase-angle or zero-cross power control per zone, state-of-the-art "Hall Effect" current transducers and enhanced control software.
Altanium can be used with a variety of Moldflow interchangeable, global operator interfaces, including the monochrome touch screen NeoTM (for up to 12 zones), the mid-range color Delta2 (up to 48 zones), or the soon to be released, high-end color MatrixTM (up to 384 zones), featuring numerous temperature control, monitoring, alarm and diagnostics functions.
For more information on Altanium hot runner controls, call Moldflow Corporation at +1 805-523-9593 or go to www.moldflow.com.
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Why Hot Runner Controls?
Hot runner systems continue to gain popularity because they provide immediate, tangible benefits such as reduced cycle times and superior part quality due to tighter control of temperature and pressure, with no material waste from the sprue and runner system, resulting in less scrap. More and more industry segments use nothing but hot runner systems as they increasingly use complex, large and high cavitation molds.
The packaging industry leads hot runner usage with cap and closure producers beginning to standardize on large, 100-plus-cavity molds. More and more thin-walled packaging products are being produced using the hot runner process, but in particular it is in the PET industry where the hot runner process has become the most predominant method of production. So called "barrier PET bottles" are created from monolayer or multi-layer preforms, using a co-injection molding process that assures high-barrier performance (basically keeping carbon dioxide loss to a minimum). These barrier PET preforms are produced with a narrow process window that requires a hot runner system.
Medical device production has always been a primary market for hot runner controls with its complex, high cavitation requirements, especially for the production of small, ultra-low-tolerance parts.
The automotive industry continues to mold larger, more complex parts to reduce assembly cost and time — for example, bumpers, dashboards, hoods, even entire body panels. Other areas where hot runner systems are applied include the co-injection of different materials and/or colors, such as multi-colored automotive lenses and interior parts.
The increased use of temperature-sensitive engineering plastics, hard-to-mold polymers and co-injected materials demands the ultimate in temperature control to assure dimensional consistency, which is where Moldflow hot runner controls add value. It is imperative for the best part price ratio that the core of a mold, the hot runner, be properly controlled.
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