From 24 to 27 April 2018 Waldorf Technik introduced itself at the Chinaplas 2018 in Shanghai, China focusing on the topic “pipette tips cavity-sorted in racks”.
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For this purpose, the patented automation system Vario TIP FSS was presented at the booth of Engel Austria. With its slim line design, the system opens up the market to the MedTec injection moulders in new performance classes and keeps the space requirement in the clean room low. For the first time, a highly integrated production cell for manufacturing pipette tips under cleanroom conditions was presented.
This exhibit is the result of cooperation between Europe and China. Engel (Schwertberg, Austria), Waldorf Technik (Engen, Germany) and Wellmei Mold (Dongguan, China) have combined their know-how and experience with medical precision parts and tailored the system solution exactly to the specific requirements of the Chinese processors. The automation solution developed by Waldorf Technik removes 32 pipette tips from the mould in sync with the injection moulding process and loads groups of 96 pipette tips, sorted by cavity, into racks. Every 18 seconds, 96 pipette tips are discharged from the production cell, which is enclosed to create a cleanroom environment.
The Vario TIP from Waldorf Technik is the patented and worldwide leading system concept, for example in the production of pipette tips, cuvettes or reagent wells. These products are laboratory consumables that must fulfill high quality requirements and they demand cavity sorting in the packaging unit to guarantee delivery reliability in every case.
Massive reduction of rejects by replacing individual missing parts:
In the patented Vario TIP system, individual parts are checked prior to packaging and individual missing parts are replaced by good parts. This way error-related rejects with sporadic errors can be reduced by about 90 % on average compared to conventional devices.
Testing Technology:
The concentricity of pipette tips at the thin end, this means the even wall thickness distribution, as well as the horizontal injection rate (flash) are two of the critical quality features that are difficult to detect with normal camera testing. Waldorf Technik has developed its own procedure for this test: Faulty parts are also rejected immediately after detection.
Run-Out-Forecast:
Waldorf Technik goes a step further with its new technology to predict the development of the concentricity of the pipette tips per cavity. In a statistical procedure, a prognosis curve is determined, which enables the manufacturer to procure the spare parts for the affected cavity in the mould weeks before the critical concentricity tolerance is exceeded, in order to replace these in good time without any additional downtime as part of tool maintenance. This avoids today's practice of discarding the defective cavity at the time of the failure (scrap), locking (validation problem) or stopping the system until the problem is solved (loss of production). Waldorf Technik once again sets new standards in the field of automation for laboratory consumables.
