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Economic and Productivity Facts

Top 10 Reasons Plastics Processors Need a MACO Control Retrofit 

1) Costs - With Many OEM’s Obsolescing Controls, a Complete Upgrade can cost less than a repair and significantly add life to your Machine—PS: Did you know that we still repair MACO’s Built 20 Years Ago.

2) Efficiency - MACO Controllers run with a very fast processor, often lowering cycle times, and minimizing cutoff and scrap

3) Information - the new production information screens provide critical production data.

4) SPC - Standard SPC Screens provide graphical historical data on production runs with up to 10 trends per graph

5) Upgrade - With the Eurotherm purchased training program, we provide you with the necessary tools so that properly trained personal can make minor upgrades to the control software without expensive factory personal

6) Versatility - Eurotherm can provide the same control configurations for all your machines regardless of the original manufacturer—VD—Milacron—Sterling—Engle—Newbury—Husky and more.

7) Commonality - Our engineering group can provide similar look and feel for most machine types and set ups.

8) Recipes - Recipe storage on the MACO Control is Huge, you can store all of your recipes, together with the ability to provide common names such as Customer Name, Part Number, or Mold Number, ETC

9) Information Transfer - It is easy with the conveniently located USB Ports. Program changes, data transfer and screen changes are all made simple and fast using USB stick transfer.

10) Technology - The CE Net technology allows the machine to startup quickly without the issues of rotating media such as hard drives.

In Summary, a MACO Upgrade will make your older plastic processing machinery more Modern, more Efficient, and Easier to Maintain, probably for less cost than a Processor repair on your Existing Machine Control System.

 

  • Experience Less cost for spares.  If you find that you regularly need to replace parts for your current processor, in many cases, it could cost just as much as a complete MACO control system.  And, you will only be buying old technology from used or rebuilt parts with little to no warranty.  With a new MACO System, you will now have a 3 year warranty and a long term availability of spares and service.

 

  • Improvements like the speed of the MACO processor, which when running with our closed loop Impact Process Control System can help in running your product more precisely and with less material consumption and scrap day in and day out.

 

  • MACO production screen package.  This standard packaged screen is powerful and it provides common productivity results and uptime information for each shift all on one screen.

 

  • The capability of having an historical trending process with SP you can have up to ten parameters to record and graph.

 

  • With the Eurotherm purchased training program, we provide you with the necessary tools so that properly trained personal can make minor upgrades to the control software. Most OEMs and control retrofitters will not provide access to source code.
  • Let us emphasize the point that we retrofit all machine makes and models therefore; you can have uniformity for all your machines regardless of age or configuration. Standardization of operator stations and screen packages throughout the plant.

 

  • Experience and dedication to Plastics Processing for over 40 years. MACO machinery control systems are, and always have been, designed just the plastics industry.

 

  • Simplifying the recipe manager screens.  With our easy to use recipe manager screens, you can save all recipes internally on the system and transfer to a USB or, to a network and back again.

 

  • We put the ease of updating firmware with the USB port.  You can actually download information and program changes to and from any PC and to the control via front loading USB ports. Program changes purchased from our experienced and trained engineers can be sent via email from any of our global engineering offices right to your PC and then downloaded to a USB stick. You then take it to your machine, power down the control, insert the USB stick, push about 4 keypads and you are ready to resume processing. It’s really that simple!

 

  • Standard HMI configuration incorporates the use of CE net which has no hard drive to fail and provides fast start up.
 

Last updated 5/2011

You may ask: “What are the financial advantages of retrofitting a Blow Molding machine with a new control system?”

An analysis was made of a molders’ before and after productivity levels and scrap rates to determine the ROI of adding a new MACO Compact control system to a multiple head blow molding machine. The results of this analysis defiantly show substantial improvements that can be obtained based on material cost in relationship to increases in productivity and reduction in scrap over a 12 month period using the same mold and material.

PART SPECS

Material: HDPE @ $.62/lb

Part Weight: .74 lb/part

Number of Cavities: 4

Production Schedule: 3 shifts-5 days/week-48 weeks/yr

BEFORE RETROFIT

Cycle Time: 12.5 seconds

Ave Scrap rate: 5%

Annual Production: 6,635,520 parts/yr

Scrap Parts: 331,776 parts/yr

AFTER RETROFIT

Cycle Time: 11.5 seconds

Ave Scrap Rate: 2%

Annual Production: 7,188,480 parts/yr

Scrap Parts: 98,205 parts/yr

Production Increase: 7.7%

Scrap Decrease: 3%

SAVINGS-CACULATED:

Scrap Reduction in Material Cost: $52,048/yr

Productivity Increase Savings: $266,112/yr

RETURN ON INVESTMENT

Cost of New Control System: $44,498

Return on Scrap Only: 10 Months

Return on Productivity Savings: 2 Months

Return on Total Productivity & Scrap Savings: 1.7 Months

 

What are the financial advantages of retrofitting?

An analysis was made of a Injection Molder’s production levels and scrap rates to determine the return on investment of adding a new MACO Compact control system to a 700 ton machine. Using the same mold and material over a 12 month period, results show substantial savings based on increase to production and reduction of scrap.

Part Specifications:

Material: Polypropylene @ $0.68/lb Weight: 0.72 lbs/part

Number of cavities: 4

Production schedule: 3 shifts; 5 days/week; 48 weeks/yr

 

 

Before Retrofit

After Retrofit Results

 

Savings

Cycle Time:

45 seconds

43.5 seconds

1.5 second reduction in cycle time

 

Annual Production:

1,843,200

1,906,560

63,660 more parts

$31,021.05

Annual Scrap:

110,592

38,131

72,461 fewer scrapped parts

$35,476.90

Scrap Rate:

6%

2%

substantially reduced scrap rate

 

 

 

 

Total Savings:

$66,497.95

 

 

 

Total Cost of new control system:

$31,498.00

ROI based on increased production only: 12+ months
ROI based on reduced scrap only: 10-1/2+ months
ROI based on increased production and reduced scrap: 5-1/2+ months

 

EM-3c Features & Benefits

Feature

Benefit

Eurotherm Adaptive auto-tuning temperature control to provide proper tuning for precise temperature control in all circumstances and changing environments without user intervention.

Better, more precise and consistent temperature control means higher quality, less scrap and energy savings.

Heater Burnout Alarm to provide warning of failed heater elements without the cost or complexity of current monitoring system.

Allows for early notification of heater problems so that repairs can be made on your schedule increasing line availability and productivity

Auto-Comp feature for automatic switching to a “smart” manual output upon sensor break.

Allows for notification of sensor break while maintaining good temperature control to allow production to continue so that repairs can be made on your schedule increasing line availability and productivity

Group set point change

Save time when making process changes

Recipe manager

Save time and reduce mistakes when starting the line and during changeovers.  This means faster production and less scrap.

Time programming of recipe functions

Automatically load temperature set points over time for starting and stopping lines to save time and effort

Automatically load temperature set points over time for starting and stopping lines to save time and effort

Custom tailor the EM-3c for your application without costly customer programming.  Saves money!

Historical trending of all process parameters

Easily diagnose process problems to improve quality and prevent future problems.

Alarm and Event Logging

Easily diagnose process problems to improve quality and prevent future problems.

Four security levels

Safeguard your valuable process setup and simplify operator procedures

Multiple language capable

All text is multiple-language ready to meet bi-lingual needs.  Translations are easily customized locally to meet regional requirements.

Analog board with 6 analog inputs for analog monitoring and alarming

Powerful analog monitoring and alarming built in to save time and money

WonderWareInTouch HMI software

The world’s most popular HMI software provides the ability for complete customizability as well as robust plant integration of data.

4-slot Control block with 8, 16 or 24 zones of control with auto-sensing

Powerful scalability allows economical expansion without custom programming saving time and money.

Option for up to two strain gauge pressure cards to provide up to four pressure inputs

Allows for economical expansion of popular strain gauge pressure sensors.  Even includes excitation and cal relay!

Option for up to four channels of melt pressure control

Provides economical melt pressure control for more precise control of your extrusion process.  Saves money, reduces scrap and improves quality.

User configuration of up toeight control blocks

Powerful scalability allows economical expansion without custom programming saving time and money.

Front bezel located USB port on PC Based operator station

Convenient access to valuable process data and allows for easy high level configuration changes.

EM-3c components come pre-programmed for all standard features.

Save time and money by having the features of a customer extrusion system at the cost of a multi-loop controller.

EM-3c components come pre-programmed for all standard features.

Allows for customization to meet ANY application requirement.

Expansion through additional control blocks or other remote block components

Allows for customization to meet ANY application requirement.

Option for integrated drive control

Provides economical integration of drive control into the extrusion control system.

All programming is customizable

Allows for customization to meet ANY application requirement.

MACO vs. MOOG

This is recent data on a comparison we ran at a customer’s plant.  Samples were taken using the Eurotherm MACO Parison Control and a Moog control. The customer was making 34 gram shampoo bottles on a wheel machine.  The standard deviation using the MACO was .2609 grams, while with the Moog it was .4619 grams.  The customer was able to produce more uniform bottles and reduce their plastic costs by more than $ 43.75 per day on each machine.  After the savings were shown they retrofitted an additional fifty machines with Eurotherm MACO Parison Controls. 

We have performed other comparisons with our control versus the Hunkar with similar results.

The Eurotherm MACO Parison Control performs a correction every 0.1 milliseconds.

Below are the results of the MACO versus the Moog:

 

 
MACO
Moog

Target Weight

34 grams

34 grams

Standard Deviation

2609 grams

4619 grams

Maximum Weight

34.6 grams

35.6 grams

Minimum Weight

33.2 grams

32.3 grams