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Steve Maguire (far left) President of Maguire Products, and the inventor of the Maguire gravimetric blender. With him (left to right) are his sons: Stephen Maguire, Vice-President of manufacturing; Eric Maguire, Operations Manager; and Paul Maguire, President of Maguire affiliate Riverdale Global. They are shown with the 50K blender prior to its shipment to Jasplastik |
Maguire Europe has reached a milestone in its history, shipping its 50,000th gravimetric blender to Jasplastik-SK in Slovakia.
The company followed its Maguire Weigh Scale Blender (WSB) to the consumer electronics, automotive components, and EPS packaging leader's facility in Galanta to mark the occasion, with Maguire Vice-President of Marketing and Sales Frank Kavanagh presenting General Manager Milan Macháček with a $50,000 (€46,500, £40,000) credit toward a future equipment purchase.
Built in the US by Maguire Products, Maguire blenders are the most widely used gravimetric blenders for plastics processing. Steve Maguire, the company’s President and Chief designer, developed the blender in 1989. The blender sold to Jasplastik-SK is a WSB 240R unit, with maximum throughput in the 270 to 350 kg/hr range. Maguire supplies over 120 WSB models, with throughputs ranging from 40 to 5,500 kg/hr.
Founded in 2001 Jasplastik-SK is part of the Jasplastik Group headquartered in Hungary. At its main facility in Galanta, Jasplastik-SK employs 2,000 people, according to Macháček, and operates 60 injection moulding machines up to 2,300 tonnes. At a new and growing facility in Nitra, the company has 20 injection moulding machines up to 1,700 tonnes and employs 300 people. Chief among its products are consumer electronic components for Samsung and Sony, plus automotive parts. Total turnover in 2016 exceeded €90 million.
"Jasplastik-SK proudly tells customers that all of our equipment—from moulding presses to auxiliary equipment to pad printers and robots—is supplied by the plastics industry’s most reliable and reputable companies," said Macháček. "Maguire is certainly one of these partners, and we are particularly pleased to play a part in this milestone in the history of the Maguire Weigh Scale Blender."
When it was introduced 27 years ago, the Maguire blender was the first affordable and easy to operate system for precisely controlling the composition of a raw material blend, noted Maguire Europe sales manager Robert Tesar, who is the account representative for Jasplastik-SK.
"Today the Maguire blender is used worldwide by moulding and extrusion processors, compounders, recyclers, and wire and cable manufacturers, along with a range of other Maguire® auxiliary equipment systems," he said.
A gravimetric batch blender sequentially dispenses each batch ingredient in its target proportion into a weigh chamber; then, by monitoring each gain in weight of a batch, the blender control makes adjustments to subsequent batches to maintain accuracy and control raw material consumption. The Maguire system holds batch accuracy to within +/- 0.1 per cent, according to Maguire’s Frank Kavanagh.
"The precision of the Maguire blender has generated substantial savings in material costs and increases in product quality throughout the industry," said Kavanagh. "In combination with control systems and software developed by Maguire, the blender has also made advanced capabilities readily accessible to a wide range of processors, including lot-to-lot accountability and documentation, extrusion yield control, and factory automation."
