A German company seeks to patent a corrugator that is used to shape extruded plastic pipe and tube. The corrugator, described by Schlemmer GmbH of Poing, consists of multiple mold blocks, a track to guide the mold blocks in pairs during the forming process and two return tracks that allow the mold blocks to be easily removed or inserted into the system without shutting down the extrusion line.
Additionally, the corrugator has a device for detecting a radio-frequency identification (RFID) marker in each mold block, as well as a controller that initiates the extraction or insertion of a particular mold block. Users can change the dimensions of the corrugation by varying the sequence of the individual mold blocks.
The invention significantly reduces the complexity of the tooling and reduces the amount of start-up waste, according to the patent application. Further, “small volumes of the plastics product can also be produced, on account of which a reduced inventory is possible,” the application states.
Patent application 20190168474; published June 6
Patents and patent applications can be viewed at www.uspto.gov
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