PT Blog

Facilan is said to be the world’s first fifth-generation 3D filament recently launched by ElogioAM—a new joint venture of Sweden’s Perstorp AB and The Netherlands’ 3D4Makers, which is currently pending approval from authorities.

To be based in Haarlem, Netherlands, ElogioAM aims to enable true deployment of additive manufacturing capability for medical, fashion, orthotics, advanced prototyping, modeling, industry and consumer markets, say the partners. ElogioAM already claims to have a unique product range in the Facilan family of 3D printing filaments, created from the ground up, always with safety in mind, and designed to outperform other filaments as follows:

Braskem (U.S. office in Philadephia) celebrated the 30^th anniversary of the Spheripol PP process technology at its Neal production plant in Kenova, West Virginia. The facility produces more than 500 million lb/yr of PP homopolymer.

According to plant manager Jeff Blatt, since its initial launch at the Neal facility, the annual production capacity of the plant has nearly doubled and the “future is bright as ever”. Within the past eight years, Braskem has invested more than $20 million in production facility infrastructure enhancements, helping further extend the plant’s successful record for safety, reliability, efficiency and environmental protection.

Yes, it was a little over the top, but the idea was to show how much robots can accomplish within a single molding cycle if you take advantage of their versatility. To make that point, Yushin America, Cranston, R.I., put together a complex cell that combined two injection presses, each with a servo linear robot, plus a seven-axis collaborative robot (cobot).

The end product was a “shaker cup” for making milk shakes and other mixed beverages. The two presses molded a PP cup and a lid with a flip-top closure attached by a living hinge. The two parts were threaded; the robots each used a servo wrist to unscrew the parts from the molds. The robot that demolded the cup also placed an in-mold label in the mold beforehand and presented the cup to a pad printer after molding. The second robot unscrewed the lid, closed the pour spout, placed information cards inside the cup, and then screwed the cup and lid together. Finally, the cobot placed the assembled product on a conveyor.

New analysis from Houston-based IHS Markit signals the convergence of two significant and revolutionary technological developments in the petrochemical industry: crude oil-to-chemicals (COTC) and oxidative coupling of methane (OCM). The consultant believes the technologies are poised to have a very significant impact on the chemical industry.

Don Bari, v.p. of chemical technology at IHS Markit, notes that disruptive technology development and deployment has been dominant on a global basis in this industry within the last decade. It has been largely driven by the extreme pricing dynamics of the energy industry, translating directly to petrochemical feedstocks; where such new technology has enabled deployers of capital and technology to use low-cost and locally abundant feedstocks.

Many equipment monitoring and predictive maintenance systems are well-equipped to monitor a single piece of equipment, signal alarms or even detect patterns. Few, however, are built to grow like SmartServices, the new equipment monitoring platform from Conair.

A particularly promising aspect of the SmartServices platform is the insight it provides on how processors’ performance data compares to the collective data of others using similar equipment. Even as individual users interact with the data for their own machines, the platform collects, analyzes and stores performance data from thousands of other connected processors worldwide, not just on Conair equipment.