With a thermoforming area of 4600 x 2800mm, the latest thermoforming machine Crea Series manufactured by Cannon Ergos is one of the world’s largest fully adjustable thermoformers ever made: its mould size and the range of available adjustments is not currently matched by others
The project, developed in partnership with Cannon Deutschland for a German customer which produces thermoformed components for industrial and agricultural vehicles, has been a real challenge for Cannon.
In June 2018, winning the German competitors, Cannon has signed a contract for the supply of a thermoforming machine able to produce automotive components of dimensions up to 4500 x 2500mm, 1000mm high, up to 100kg weight and with high aesthetics features.
These requirements have obliged Cannon Ergos to supply the customer with a highly customize CREA thermoforming machine: since the surfaces of the components to be thermoformed are so wide, the thermoforming area has been redesigned in order to reach the size of 4600 x 2800mm.
This thermoforming machine, the biggest Cannon Ergos has manufactured so far, is fully automated: aperture (window) plates, clamp frame, and sheet loader can be automatically adjusted by the operator’s interface. Due to the weight of the components to be produced, human intervention has been completely removed: the human-machine interface has been conceived to always guarantee safe operations.
Furthermore, to produce the vehicle’s parts with the high performance required, both in terms of aesthetics quality and protection of the machine mechanical organs from shocks and debris, Cannon Ergos has developed a specific heating system and a cleaning one. This latter, with which the plates of the thermoforming plants are equipped, has been supplied in order to remove solids or dust (till 1 micron size) from the surface to be thermoformed.
In this way, the surface touching the mould does not create any faults or imperfections.
A large and high-performance thermoforming machine, whose overall weight exceeds a ton and whose transport – escorted – to the German customer’s headquarters took 4 days.
Although the installed power is greater than 1 MW to meet the peaks in material heat demand, the heating system architecture and Cannon Ergos control and management system allow to save energy at many stages of the cycle.
The customer, which already used the thermoforming technology, has place its own trust in Cannon know-how and experience, acquiring, thank to this new thermoforming plant, the capability to produce one-shot components: before, the client was producing the same parts in two pieces, glued together to form the whole vehicle component.
Thanks to Cannon Ergos thermoforming system, the customer has improved its production capacity and has reduced costs: this investment led the customer to improve its productivity, realizing components with better performance and of higher quality.
Visit the page dedicated to Cannon’s Crea series thermoforming machines