Our CREA thermoforming machine doubles productivity

Creating rooflights

Attics can be illuminated and ventilated with different types of rooflights: fixed, aerating, tubular, electric, etc. Among these, dome rooflights have a rounded shape, limiting the entrance of direct sunlight to avoiding overheating.

This type of rooflight consists of a transparent or semi-transparent panel (satin, texturized, etc.), generally made of polycarbonate or acrylic materials – transparent and very resistant – enclosed in a frame that may be wood, aluminium or plastic.

To create the typical bulge, the transparent panel is thermoformed using a mold or simply air pressure, so that the “bubble” that gives the characteristic shape is created. The thermoformed panel is then assembled with the frame.

Compared to the mold, pressure allows greater freedom in varying the dome’s curvature even during the rooflight production cycle.

One well-known European manufacturer of pressure-formed domes turned to us to meet their need: flexible dome production and a large increase in productivity.

The target was to increase production and make it more constant, lowering dependence on the machine operator. The thermoforming machine they were already using required the operator to know the “recipe” by heart to obtain rooflights of the required quality. If the operator was absent, production could suffer serious delays.

The thermoforming process is largely dependent on environmental conditions: external temperature and humidity can significantly affect the machine and, consequently, the final result. This client, therefore, sought a machine capable of automatically eliminating these issues altogether.

CREA: our all-in-one solution

We responded to the client’s specific requests by supplying a CREA series single-station thermoforming machine with several advanced sensors and a high level of automation: the machine produces the finished piece without any operator intervention. Once the rooflight parameters are set, the machine produces a finished piece, leaving the operator to load the panel to be thermoformed, supervise the processing cycle and unload the piece once it has cooled.

Thanks to sensors installed on the thermoforming machine, the system adapts automatically to variations in environmental working conditions (external temperature and humidity), creating the correct pressure to obtain the desired crowning.

This guarantees maximum repeatability and means the final product maintains its excellent quality.

To heat the polycarbonate panel, we opted for infrared high-speed quartz lamps, more suitable for treating materials with a delicate aesthetic performance; the use of these lamps eliminates the risk of opacifying or damaging the material during heating.

Our experience in thermoforming allowed us to provide the client with a one-of-a-kind CREA, specifically developed to meet their request for greater flexibility: to shape differently sized domes — even during the same production cycle — we created a double forming area allowing two pieces to be simultaneously but independently shaped with different final product height and tool dimensions.

The forming surface’s basic configuration involves using automatic adjustable plates to increase or decrease thermoforming area. This makes it possible to create pieces with dimensions between 1200×1000 mm and 3000×2500 mm when forming with a single window or even 550×1000 mm when forming in the double window configuration.

Our team developed a specific software for automating and controlling the machine’s main components: simple and immediate, the touch screen user interface allows the client to view each of the machine’s parameters in maximum 3 clicks.

Specialized software for a unique machine

With this software the machine operator can:

• Regulate plate closure: during the same cycle, the client can thermoform pieces with different sizes
• Determine the exact amount of pressure to exert on all parts: this makes it possible to simultaneously produce domes of different convexities
• Regulate the power output of each individual lamp
• Monitor the thermoforming machine’s performance in real time
• Generate a report for each production cycle

The software allows remote access to the machine in order to make a preventive diagnosis in case of anomaly.

With our CREA thermoforming machine and its divisible plate, the client can now produce up to 45 pieces per hour, working with double forming, and 25 pieces per hour with single forming, compared to 14 pieces per hour produced with their previous machine.

The double configuration we provided thus doubled their production capacity.