PET 50 mL BOTTLE
Achieving the quality required for miniature liquor bottles with high cycle molding
Taking “heavy but fast” to a new level
This was a project with a customer producing a wide variety of liquor containers. The customer was producing small lots of miniature bottles for alcoholic beverages using ISBM machines made by another manufacturer. To address increasing demand in the miniature bottle market in recent years, the customer was eager to boost production and asked us whether we could help meet its needs. We accordingly put together a proposal for satisfying the customer’s needs for higher quality and increased production. The existing products had quality issues related to production on the machines of another manufacturer, and the customer had high expectations for quality improvements as part of its plan to increase production.
The customer also wanted to change the lip section to match two types of cap (plastic and steel), thereby boosting the container’s versatility to meet the growing market needs. Leveraging the advantages of our one-stage molding process, we made dedicated lip cavities to shape the lip section respectively for plastic or steel caps, enabling flexible production according to demand.
Next Stage
With an eye to future development of various shapes, we also reworked the design of an existing reference product to create a product that was heavier by 2 g. With SBIII machines, molding heavier products tends to mean longer molding cycles, but using an AL machine with our high-speed mold release technology enabled an even shorter molding cycle than anticipated. The increase in wall thickness increases rigidity and improves quality. We increased production volume using a “heavy but fast” model that turns the accepted wisdom of “the lighter the faster” on its head.
