At NPE: Milacron launches PowerPak for packaging applications

, with power in the form of an accumulator offered on the injection end to give comfort to processors who might not normally consider a hybrid or all-electric for thin-walled packaging. It’s a market segment that the company has long served, said Andy Stirn, market development manager, but now is more clearly targeting. “The PowerPak has its origins in the PowerLine,” he said, referring to the company’s long-established machine range, “but is optimized for packaging, be it thin-walled containers, closures, medical packaging, even large pails and buckets.”

The machines are available now in clamp sizes of 440 and 550 tons, with the range to be extended to smaller sizes and as high as 1100 tons. It is available electrically powered on all four machine axes, or with the ejector and injection portions as hydraulic. Stirn told MPW during an interview at the company’s stand (S24012) that the manufacturer already has seen considerable interest from processors of plastic cutlery, 1- to 4-gal containers, and from ones molding dairy and medical applications. “You don’t need a hydraulic [machine] with every packaging application,” he noted.

Among advances Stirn cited is one that seems simple—a walk-up base design—but which makes perfect sense to operators who in the past have had to lean far across a machine to get to a mold; and the Eject Bump, a patent-pending technique to generate higher ejection force. Running molds from potential customers in test trials, he said energy use on the PowerPak machines had been 50-60% less. —[email protected]