I need a list of what commercially available PC-Based control systems exist for tubing extrusion, particularly those which can be easily added to existing extruders. I'm not looking for anyone to sell me anything just a list of what's out there so I can investigate further. Any ideas?

 

I used to work with profile extruders. We looked at Barber-Colman-Eurotherm, Davis Standard, FACTS, and RKC.

We ended up designing a custom system based on Opto 22 Mistic controls that worked very well. We also had lines which used loop controllers from
Eurotherm for temperature and Fenner for the drives to control individual zones.

None of these are PC-based, as far as I know, but you could connect a PC to any of them for data ack and recipe functions using a SCADA package or
Visual Basic.

Feel free to contact me via email if you have any specific questions, I will try to help.

Bill Sturm

 

Having had experience of extrusion of long length (>10kM) plastic tubes to close tolerance, I would be pleased to learn why you need a PC based controller. In my experience, drives that have been available for some time have all that is necessary to ratio control the haul-off caterpillar and extruder.
For long term stability, the addition of a gear pump at a set up cost of approx. $15,000 is a worthwhile investment.
If you are looking to automatically hold bottom tolerance or maintain density of throughput to save raw material costs, it may be worthwhile considering something like the INOEX system at about $35,000 set up cost.
Consider this:- is it necessary to have PC based control on an essentially steady state process?
hope this helps.
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