This year marks a special one for Fort Collins, CO-based CBW Automation: the company is celebrating its 45th anniversary, which coincides with NPE2015. CBW is returning to NPE this year after an extremely successful NPE2012, where the company won the Judges Award at the International Plastics Design Competition. The six-company collaborative effort designed, developed and built a high speed, 16-cavity IML mold and molding cell, to produce a generic 5-6cc polypropylene pre-filled syringe. This required high-tech, high-speed automation that included in-line cutting of the IML label from a roll and that incorporated a logo that could only be seen under black light to ensure supply chain security and product safety.

That award-winning collaborative effort resulted in a show-stopper at NPE2012, but in honor of its 45 years of developing the best in automation for the injection molding and thermoforming industries, CBW will be showcasing even more exciting, customized automation. The debut of the new SSE Robot will be demonstrated in cooperation with injection molding machinery manufacturer Engel, in booth W-1303. Engel will be running a 2x4 thin wall mold built by StackTeck Systems Ltd., molding a 1.5 liter container in a 720-ton e-Speed machine with a CBW SSE high speed side-entry robot with a retrieval time of less than one second.

“Our SSE is CBW’s most technologically advanced robot available to date and combines CBW’s fundamental speed advantage of high flow vacuum technology with the additional flexibility afforded by a robot strip stroke,” said Robert Harvey, CBW’s VP of sales & marketing. “Strip stroke capability allows us to capture more complex part geometries as well as follow the ejection stroke of the mold while the part is contained in the robot."

“High flow vacuum part capture optimizes productivity with an intrusion time capability of less than 0.5 second. Additionally, the SSE robot can recognize that the vacuum has been achieved in as little as 60 milliseconds,” Harvey explained.

After its successful debut at NPE2012, CBW will again exhibit the TSE robot along with an integrated EVOH inspection system for detecting the presence and integrity of a barrier layer to provide longer shelf-life and higher quality in food and beverage packaging. The TSE robot features a telescoping design which reduces the footprint of the automation and addresses one of the primary concerns with side entry retrieval. The TSE also utilizes CBW’s high speed, high flow vacuum retrieval systems, and light weight, carbon fiber materials to achieve the fastest possible cycle times. This system will be running in Milacron’s booth W-2703.

In CBW’s booth (W-2103), the company will be expanding on its roll fed IML offering. For years, CBW’s custom IML systems have provided innovative label delivery including rotary die-cut, guillotine cut, and their latest innovation that will be unveiled at NPE 2015. CBW’s roll fed IML label handling offers both processing and cost advantages, and for the first time CBW will be using pre-cut labels in this system.

Some of CBW’s other IML innovations include flexible, quick-change designs to accommodate a variety of SKUs; independent control for different label placement strokes, varying intrusion depths, and a variety of label configurations. Alternative Label Handling Strategies is the topic of CBW’s presentation at this year’s AWA IMLCON in Miami, FL, February 18-19.

Also at CBW’s booth (W-2103) will be a lid stacking system. Lid stacking systems were the first systems CBW built 45 years ago, and today’s technologically advanced systems are better than ever.

For 45 years, CBW has dedicated its engineering and manufacturing resources to designing and developing the best in customized IML systems that optimize production, reduce costs and improve quality. “CBW is not an ‘off-the-shelf’ company,” states Harvey. “We evaluate each project that comes to us and provide the best custom solution to meet our customers’ specific needs to fit every application.”