On the top left corner of the enclosure, you will find a black power distribution block, which is the point where your qualified electrician has to bring power to the machine. We suggest you place the main disconnect close to the machine.
Once electrical power and compressed air have been supplied to the machine, you are ready to start testing it.
On the front side of the main electrical enclosure, there are three selector switches with their corresponding indicator lights beside them, they are labeled: power on, heaters on and pump on. Turn the power on and the yellow indicator will light up.
Locate the vacuum gauge of the machine. It is placed on one side of the vacuum tank. Once you have identified the gauge, turn for a few seconds the pump on, the needle in the gauge should be moving counterclockwise and show that the system is building up the vacuum. If the needle does not move, but the pump is running that means that the pump is rotating in the wrong direction, turn the pump immediately off and have your qualified electrician reverse two of the phases of the main electrical supply. This situation will not occur if you purchase a single phase machine, but it is always recommended to check that the pump is going in the right direction.
Having checked the above we are ready to start placing the machine thru its paces.
On the operator interface console of the machine, you will find a selector switch with 3 positions, hand-off-auto, place the selector on the hand position, the left green indicator should light up. On the operator interface push button front console the two bottom buttons control the opening and closing of the clamp frame.
- Press the close push button and the clamp frame will close.
- Press the start button and the frame goes into the oven, the clamping frame will not go into the oven unless the clamp frame is closed. At start up the clamp frame may appear closed but the frame still does not go in, just press the close pushbutton again.
- Press the stop button and the frame comes forward back to the forming area
- Press the up button once and the platen goes up
- Press the up button again and the vacuum is activated
- Press the up button once again and the fan will turn on.
- Press the down button (keep it maintained) and the air eject will activate and once it times out the platen will drop. Repeat the same for the top platen, the only difference is that the top platen does not activate the fan.
Try this sequence a couple of times to get a feel of the machine.
If you place the 3 position selector switch on the middle, you should have no green indicator lights on. This position is used when you want to set up your molds. If you press either the up or down button momentarily you can jog the platens up and down. And then you can set the collars on the vertical shafts that regulate the length of travel of the platens.
When you turn on the machine the touch screen on the operator console will come on.
On the square of the screen where it says select recipe, press it and select recipe 1. Do not forget that every time you change a setting on a particular screen you need to press enter on the right side, if you make a mistake you can use the CLR and put the right number.
That will take you to the second screen. If you press planning, it will take you to the next screen.
Heat on time: you can change the preset by touching the center box with the seconds preset, this controls the amount of time that the frame will stay in the oven, both in hand or auto mode press next.
Bottom platen delay: once the frame, in auto mode, comes back to the front of the machine and makes the front limit switch it will command the platen when to go up towards the material, usually we recommend setting it at 0. Press next.
Bottom timer: this is the amount of time that the platen will stay in the up position
Vacuum delay Bottom platen: this controls when the vacuum will come on, once the clamping frame comes out of the oven and the platen is fully up there is an interval of a couple of seconds, you do not want to turn on the vacuum in the air, you want it to happen when the vacuum box edges have engaged the material.
Vacuum time bottom platen: this is the amount of time that the vacuum will stay on, you want to set it a couple of seconds less than the amount of time you have on the bottom timer.
The screens length of pulse: interval between pulses and number of pulses work together. For example, if you set the length of pulse at 2 seconds , the interval at 2 seconds and the number of pulses at 4. The vacuum valve will open and close 4 times for 2 seconds each time and wait 2 seconds between pulses. This function is very useful especially when you are running tall male molds where the material tends to gather in the corner creating a web. This brings the material in a controlled manner around the mold, and after the vacuum has completed the number of pulses the vacuum goes in full mode.
Air eject bottom platen: this function helps you break the vacuum and in many occasions get the formed parts out of the cavities of the mold. The setting will tell the valve for how long to stay on once the bottom timer has timed out. Once the air eject times out the platen will drop. On the vacuum and air eject tree on the side of the machine, there are two small air pressure regulators the bottom one supplies air eject to the bottom platen, and the top to the top platen they allow you to determine the pressure you want to supply to the air ejects valve. Too much pressure will distort your formed parts.
Length of travel: we usually set it to 5 secs, and the platen will drop all the way to the bottom of the stroke of the cylinder, but if you are running very shallow molds you may not want to drop the platen all the way down, by setting fewer seconds the platen will drop a proportional distance.
Mold cool time: sometimes your molds start heating up, in order to cool them down a little you may want to use this function. If you set it at 6 sec, it means that the fan will come on for 6 secs while the clamping frame goes into the oven.
Part cool time: this is a delay that allows the machine to form the part and once you determined that the part is formed properly you turn the fan on to cool the part. For example, if you set it at 10 secs, the platen will go up, the vacuum will engage and after 10 secs the fan will come on, it goes off automatically once form time times out.
The following timers are set up the same as the equivalent bottom timers:
- Top platen delay
- Top platen timer
- Top vacuum delay
- Top vacuum timer
- Top air eject
- Top heaters
For example, if you have a 36″ x 36″, machine the screen will show 9 boxes. If you have a 48″ x 60″ the screen will show 12 boxes. The number of boxes tells you how many zones you have. From the operator view, the left top box is the one that controls the back left heater and that one is zone 1 next one to the right is zone number two and so forth. Use this in conjunction with the oven layout diagram, when you change the preset, for example, to 60 it means that the heater is running at 60%. We recommend not go above 75% because the material needs to absorb the heat.
Bottom heaters: same as above.
The most important is the following: every time you change a preset or a group of presets press exit. That will take you to the second screen, then press save recipe and then use recipe. This way we make sure that the new presets have been loaded into the memory of the PLC.