Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD), one of the world's biggest manufacturers of medical devices, has decided to buy two El-Exis 550 injection moulding machines in order to press forward with the expansion of their petri dish production. With this move they are taking account of the market trend which predicts a sharp rise in demand for petri dishes in the future.
With the new manufacturing cells BD is switching its production from an 8+8 to a 16+16-cavity stack mould. With modern injection moulding machines and moulding and automation technology a shorter cycle can be achieved with 100% more output. A further advantage for customers is the almost identical space requirements despite double the number of cavities.
The manufacturing systems are fully automatic, right up to the packaging of the injection moulded products. The high-performance injection moulding machine EL-Exis 550 is part of a system that also comprises a 16+16-cavity, high-performance stack mould made by Plastisud (France) and a fast side-entry robot including a bagging and boxing system from Hekuma.
When awarding the contract BD did not select its usual injection moulding partner, but opted for Sumitomo (SHI) Demag, impressed by the efficiency of its modern hybrid technology. The main reasons were the demonstrable reliability, the low energy consumption and the dry cycle time of the El-Exis machine.
