Axon (axoncorp.com), powered by Pro Mach (promachinc.com),featured the company’s next-generation shrink sleeve applicator – the Lanzara. A servo-controlled, mandrel-style machine, the new Lanzara delivers the highest output at the most sensible price of any applicator in the industry at speeds up to 400 units per minute.

The heart of the Lanzara is the PacDrive^™ 3 automation platform from Schneider Electric^™, which integrates discrete, motion, and IT functionality into a high-performance packaging-machine solution. The PacDrive 3 updates I/O motion blocks at a blistering one millisecond each, giving Lanzara outstanding motion control and overall flexibility. For example, with the new Axon Smart Speed Control feature, Lanzara can automatically increase or decrease the sleeving rate, matching upstream and downstream line speed without operator involvement for ‘set it and forget it’ operation. Smart Speed Control ensures optimum throughput, uptime, and quality.

With a new Smart Cutting System, Axon has dramatically improved its film cutting technology, reducing the number of blade changeovers required by 66 percent when compared to past generation solutions. In addition, Lanzara features a new Smart Film Feed System that simplifies film threading and greatly improves the control of the film web as it moves through the machine, especially at higher speeds, reducing waste and downtime.  

The Lanzara’s smart diagnostics program monitors machine performance, makes calculations based on that performance and history of preventative maintenance, and alerts operators to the exact date a maintenance procedure should be carried out. Smart diagnostics leading to preventive maintenance ensures the machine operates at peak efficiency and produces quality products hour after hour.

  “For more than a year, our development team worked with Schneider Electric on the software underpinnings that would take mechanical performance to a new level in terms of output and uptime,” said Brad Wegner, Vice President and General Manager, Axon. “We visited customers to see how our machines were operated in the field in order to design a machine that is incredibly easy to use. Lanzara’s extraordinary productivity and sensible price are the results of these efforts.”