One of the largest player in the automobile sector came to us for developing a machine to print four lines in an arc of 90 degrees of apprx 3-5 mm x 450 mm on a rubber tube of approx 65 mm dia and length of 450 mm. These four lines could be in same color or different colours. Basically these printed hose would then be cut into slices of 3 mm rings and be used inside the brake linings and the four color shades would basically be their code for identification of the country in which it is made, vendor who has made,type and other details best known to the customer. It is basically used for tracing out who manufactured it, when and from which plant it came in case some problem or defect is found later on during commercial use of the product in the vehicle.The challenge also involved printing the lines using pliolite paint and not the standard pad printing inks as the printing shouldnt be having any effect of brake oil if rubbed on it. After a lot of R & D, the customer got the ink developed as per the viscocity required from one of their associates and after few trials and errors we knew we were moving in the right direction. Then we developed a long plate to check if this much print area is properly transferred in which too we succeeded much to the customer's satisfaction.They conducted their trials for checking the print quality as per their parameters and the results were truly amazing.

Getting all this input and the requirements of the customer, a system was developed where in the hose pipe is manually loaded on a subfixture. Once its done then the same is loaded and fixed onto the master fixture attached to the rotary actuator on the machine. The product then gets printed with first color line, then it travels on the ball screw shuttle automatically to the second head but during this travel it turns 22 degrees approx. then the second color gets printed, again the hose moves towards the third machine head also turning 22 degrees, third color gets printed, again moves to fourth station , turns 22 degrees, fourth color gets printed, move further to the infrared curing station where printing gets cured. The whole movement of the product is on a ball screw shuttle. We have used the world famous Allen Bradley PLC with MMI display for the various functions and flexibility. The customer could chose at random on which stations he would like the particular hose to move to in the first shot, then the next staion etc. i.e he could directly move the hose to the forth station and then the 2nd station and 1st and 3rd station in any of the sequence he would like to do it. He could vene skip any of the stations or he could print double shots at a particular station. There is also the possibility to store upto 99 programs and he could set and select the program for a particular hose model if he would like to. He could vary the speed of movement of the hose too. The system is just state of the art and apart from satisfying our customer, we added one more feather to our cap.

Product : Rubber hose used in brakes Print area : 3-5 mm(width) x 450 mm(length) No of colors : Four Output : 300-400 tubes per hour