Recent and upcoming European legislation and directives as for WEEE and automotive components are guiding the polymer industry towards circular economy and a higher degree of usage of recycled polymers.
While recyclers are improving with technologies to separate plastic waste and to develop new compounds out of PIR (post industrial recycling) and PCR (post consumer reclycing) materials, the processing industry has different challenges.
One of the key concerns today is maintaining consistent part quality during the injection process when using compounds with recycled content. The fluctuations in material quality appear batch to batch, bag to bag or sometimes cycle to cycle.
Recyclers and machine producers are already developing different processes to ensure the material quality to the best degree and to adjust the machine parameters a good as possible to the changing material sheets.
However, these technologies cannot see or interfere, once the material leaves the nozzle and enters the mold. Current technologies like pressure sensors cannot look through the material or the product and are handicapped to a certain degree.
Exactly this in-line detection of anomalies inside the molding process is the focus of Avidens. With new developed DEA (dielectric analysis) sensors, this technology looks at the behaviour of the polymer inside the cavity. The complete picture and behaviour around vicosity and plastification are monitored and collected during every shot. Later this data is processed with the help of artificial intelligence and compared to pre-collected datasets, which will allow a direct live in-line feedback to the machine to adjust parameters according to the observed anomalies.
Avidens is a cooperation between sensorics and AI company SensXpert, polymer processing and engineering company Schwarz Plastic Solutions, material and laboratory specialists Netzsch Analyzing & Testing and the mold maker Precupa, specialized on sensor integration in precision molds. For the upcoming Fakuma exhibition Avidens will present the first use cases to the industry.
