Allit AG Kunststofftechnik

26 Where we let the machines flex their muscles: the production plants. Once the beating heart, the injection mould, has successfully completed all its tests and trial runs, it finally gets the chance to show what it is made of as it is deployed for mass-production purposes. After all the theory, now comes the practice. The marathon begins, the muscles are truly flexed and the machines are ready. Mate- rials are pretreated and run through pipelines to the machines, dye is added, the plastic is heated or cooled down again – our coolant water volume alone runs at 120–150 m³ per hour. Apart from its power connection, each machine has two separately controlled cooling systems and a line supplying purified and dried com- pressed air, plus a grid connection for registering faults. Thanks to our closed water circulation system we have hardly any water loss. And that is despite a veritable armada of machinery, with every machine also having a wide variety of electrically operated auxiliary equipment such as material driers, suction devices, dyeing devices, conveyor belts, handling devices, mould-tempering devices and assembly appli- ances, all of which help to automate processes. Back to those muscles: to guarantee produc- tion security, a kind of ‘firefighting service’ is on hand, which cuts in immediately in the event of a fault. All the machine data is brought together to an electronic interface, every second of the process is recorded and thus rendered trans- Machine 70.