Get control of your color quality with Automatic Closed Loop Color Control ACLCC
Today’s plastic extrusion color control process relies a bit on ‘black magic’ to be successful. Time-interval-based color monitoring is insufficient in providing information on the baseline, variation, or improvement opportunities. The process is not very controllable, predictable, or frequently even understandable. ACLCC eliminates the ‘black magic,’ making the process something that operators can control, predict, and troubleshoot.
One of the challenges of color management in plastic profile extrusion is to ensure consistent and accurate color reproduction across different batches and materials. A common solution is a color feeder, which feeds the amount and ratio of colorants based on a predefined recipe. However, this method relies on offline measurements and feedback, which can be time-consuming and prone to errors.
Predict and Troubleshoot Production
An inline spectrophotometer from X-rite, Hunter LAB or Equitech can provide real-time color information that enables production operators to make accurate color adjustments to increase color consistency and minimize costly production line errors. Adding ACLCC software and hardware will create a continuous monitoring system to catch color drift immediately and make a color correction before production moves out of tolerance. With an inline spectrophotometer and closed-loop color control system, you can monitor color in real-time, catch color drift immediately, automatically correct the color before production moves out of tolerance, and ensure you meet your production schedule.
Overview
ACLCC moves the production color QC process from one of the time-interval-based color measurements and manual adjustments to real-time color monitoring, automated closed-loop color control, and automatic defect containment. Benefits include:
- Reduced operational costs
- Process Yield Improvements
- Cost Reduction through Material savings
- Improve Operator Efficiencies
- Better Equations for Green Initiatives and Carbon Footprint Reductions
- Increased Customer Satisfaction
Features
The system uses Hunter Lab’s, Xrite’s or, Equitec’s high-resolution lab-grade spectrophotometers designed for in-line color monitoring, The solution uses the colorimetric data from the spectrophotometer to control the feeder speed, adjusting material flow automatically to maintain color within preset color tolerances. ACLCC allows the programming of downstream actions such as shortcutting boards or sorting when the system indicates the color is out of spec.
- Online, real-time color measurement and monitoring
- Touch screen PLC with easy-to-set-up and operator-friendly color-control software
- Automated closed-loop color control
- Outputs for downstream defect containment
- Historical data logging and storage for retrieval via USB or remotely on a network by FTP
- Process variables charted in real-time with 100 scans of data storage for on-screen viewing
- Calibration reminders are automatically displayed based on the number of scans and time.
Applications
ACLCC is a part of a fully integrated, online color measurement and Color control solution, tailored to meet the needs of plastics processors. This unique system allows for continuous color monitoring, automated feeder adjustments based on color measurements are taken directly from the process stream and enable downstream containment of defective products. Applications include:
- Sheet
- Vinyl Siding
- Window Profile
- Other custom profile
- Injection Molding of Large Part (Hunter Lab and Xrite Instruments)