Mould systems for the real Italian coffee

In the last few years the coffee capsules global market has registered a huge growth. This application requires the latest technological developments and a special attention to the design of the product, as it has to be seen by the end customers. Based on the above market overview, HRS Multitech started scouting the field and began working with some well-known mould-makers. Its systems for this kind of applications are designed to resist high injection pressures and drastically reduce cycle times. For excellent finish and short cycle times, the company employs conformal cooling circuits made with SLM technology, designed and produced by HRSflow in-house, following careful fluid dynamic analysis. The Multitech line satisfies the new environmental standards for packaging materials, which also require the production system to be more energy efficient. One of the most important producers in Italy, working in the packaging and medical fields, involved HRSflow in a challenging project related to coffee capsules. It required these key aspects: implementation of the thermal gate systems rather than valve gate; easy systems management and maintenance during production, keeping the same aesthetical appearance obtained with a valve gate system; fast colour change. The challenge, being a product that has to be handled after the injection process (assembling phase), was to have no vestige in order to keep safe further production processes. In addition, considering it a design product, the aesthetical aspect was a key requirement. For this reason HRS Multitech provided a dedicated thermal analysis in order to have a balanced thermal nozzle profile and to ensure hot and cold half synergies optimization, ensuring in this way better colour change performances and a consistent part weight. The result obtained was a system with high performance: better cycle time (no drooling), no vestige, fast colour change and energy saving. The company has already made several systems ranging from 16 to 32 cavities for the coffee capsules field. The choice of using the standard line of nozzles - MT, combined to decompression inlet, has made possible the use of high fluidity materials, such as PP, with satisfactory results and short cycle time. HRS Multitech allowed the optimization of hot and cold halves synergy, achieving all customer challenges. By combining the best thermal profile and manifold layout, in terms of channel section diameters, HRS Multitech system achieved excellent results both for colour change performances and gate quality. In base of that fact during production try-outs, the customer was able to perform colour change using 125 g/cav even with pearlescent masterbatch.