In the latest issue of the International Plastics Newsfor Asia, we covered pellet screening as an area where technological
breakthrough has been made possible to enable companies to immediately detect
and screen plastic pellets.
With quality and consistency being major consideration
now among pellet manufacturers and plastics processors, Kubota Corporation came
up with its Super Platon Pellet Screening System. First introduced at the company’s in-house
exhibitions held in late 2011, the pellet screening system offers a highly
efficient equipment that is able to detect black spots or off-color
contaminants without the need for the tedious process of laboratory analysis.
I had the opportunity to talk to Rick Wall, Regional
Sales Manager of Kubota at TIPREX 2013 in Bangkok, where he explained and
demonstrated the company’s latest pellet screening systems. This latest screening system from Kubota is
able to sort out foreign matters based on colour differences such as minute
black spots, blurs, black particles, etc. that are generated during the
production process of plastic pellets. Super Platon’s screening performance is
better than that of other models that are available in the market today,
according to Mr. Wall.
What makes the system interesting is that it takes away
the task of performing the screening in laboratories where samples are taken
and when they are not good, the processor will have to go back and check what’s
wrong. Here, lighting plays a great part
and Super Platon has an Omni-directional diffusion lighting method. Kubota
succeeded in controlling the contrast between light and shaded areas, which
hampers correct detection, by applying diffused light to the object material
evenly in all directions. Four sets of 5000 pixel cameras detect across a span
of 140mm. This makes it even quicker and easier to detect and screen pellets.
