Biography

• Born 1960
• Electrical eningeer
• Joined Kiefel in 1989
  -  Sales Engineer 1989 – 1993
  -  Sales Director for Packaging and Technical Parts since 1993

Control and Process Optimization in Thermoforming

From history the Thermoforming process has the whiff of black magic. Since our technology competes more and more with alternative processes the innovation is getting a new kick.
As there are now high sophisticated machine controls available and already integrated in state of the art thermoforming machines the monitoring of the process is part of the machine program. On the one hand side accurate and highly integrated sensors enable an on line feed back from the process and on the other hand side there are powerful hard and software modules available for the just in time evaluation of the measured parameters.
Starting with control of the main parameters for the Thermoforming process as there are: temperature, pressure and / or vacuum and time, the actual control systems also enable the control of speed and positioning. Together with modern sensor systems the main parameters can be monitored and controlled in a closed loop.
This could be the basics for the control of the product quality during the production.

As a result of monitoring and evaluating the thermoforming  process the challenge is to get a calculable and repeatable control of the influencing parameters.
CAP (Computer Aided Programming) is the challenge to assist the process engineers to generate all necessary parameters for a new recipe. This is one of the basics to deduct set up time and start up scrap.