Graham Engineering Corporation (GEC) of York, PA, USA, has accepted its third annual Innovator Award in 2008, from Control Design, an US publication.

The award was based on Graham Engineering Corporation’s development of a new PC control system for its rotary wheel extrusion blow moulding machinery.

The new control system was developed as part of a system-wide upgrade of control technology over all of GEC machinery platforms.

The new control system has the ability to achieve more precise parison programming, which in the past has been done using a PLC system or DCS with a dedicated card.

GEC’s new controller enables a jump in precision that dramatically increases the quality of bottles being produced with the extrusion blow moulding machinery.

In addition, it enhances the temperature control and overall system control. The new PC control is called the XMB Navigator and is available on all its blow moulding machines lines (rotary wheel, shuttle, shot pot/reciprocating screw and accumulator head)

The PC-based system incorporates GEC’s equipment manuals as a valuable added resource for customers, which can be accessed as cross-linked Pdfs offering helpful photos, schematics, and parts lists.

GEC is a supplier of plastic bottle extrusion blow moulding machinery having a range of equipment including multi-layer barrier and large part production.

GEC’s rotary mega wheel machine can produce up to 44,000 bottles per hour.

GEC is represented by HBM Plastics and Packaging Technology in Oceania.