´óÏó´«Ã½

Natech Plastics (Ronkonkoma, N.Y.) has installed six new pieces of equipment in the fourth quarter of 2021, including two Arburg injection molding machines and four custom-made filling and sealing machines. A Natech spokesperson said the latest machines come with clamp forces of 110 and 165 tons, respectively. Natech’s machine fleet of 16 presses ranges in size from 40 to 400 tons.

Natech’s facility includes an ISO Class 8 Cleanroom and engineering and design services, as well as secondary operations. The two new injection molding machines, alongside the cleanroom, will be used to manufacture medical and diagnostics products, including molded plastic components and finished devices. In particular, the spokesperson said Natech is expanding its support of diagnostics industry, including a program focused on COVID-19 testing, with these machines supplying filled tubes and bottles for rapid antigen tests.

The four new filling and sealing machines added to the cleanroom space were custom-designed and built for Natech. Featuring a modular, interchangeable design that allows for a variety of processes (filling, capping, heat sealing) to run on a single machine, they also have a built-in shuttle so filled product can be transferred to the sealing station. The rapid COVID-19 antigen tests require filling and and sealing of containers that house extraction buffers. Natech noted that the new Arburg machines allow the machine, conveyor and robot to all be integrated.