Extrusion International USA 3-2021

46 Extrusion International 3/2021 MEASURING TECHNOLOGY – CASE STUDY SORTCO GmbH & Co KG is a specialist for optical and mechanical sorting of shape and color deviations in plastic pellets. Further focal points are dust removal and metal separation of plastic raw materials. In March 2021, the company opened a new, state-of-the- art sorting service center in Niederzissen/Rhineland- Palatinate, Germany, where both optically demanding technical plastics and standard plastics are cleaned. The PURITY CONCEPT V, an optical inspection and analysis system from SIKORA, is used for fi nal sample inspection after the sorting process Fast and Reproducible Sample Inspection of Plastic Pellets SORTCO relies on SIKORA’s inspection and analysis device PURITY CONCEPT V for contract sorting The highest purity of engineering plastics is a decisive feature for the quality of the end products, especially for use in the automotive, aerospace as well as medical and information technology industries. The require- ments for the purity of the materials are correspondingly high. Since 2015, SORTCO has been active as a contract sorter and professionally prepares plastic pellets according to customer requirements. “The goal of all sorting orders is a high-purity product,” says Hilger Groß, Head of Sales & QM at SORTCO, adding, “We aim to supply our customers with material which is so clean that it is at least equivalent to virgin material. Therefore, our sorting includes a 100 % inspection of all individual pellets.” The sorting is carried out by means of different inspection methods. For the optical inline inspection and au- tomatic sorting, two PURITY SCAN- NER ADVANCED from SIKORA are used at SORTCO. Following the sort- ing, the random sample inspection of the pellets for fi nal quality control is performed with SIKORA’s laboratory testing system PURITY CONCEPT V (Picture 1). “With the system, we in- spect a pellet quantity de fi ned with the customer and agree on the in- spection frequency. For 1,000 kg of pellets, for example, between 1 and 3 samples of approximately 100 g each are inspected.” The test mate- Picture 1: Hilger Groß, Head of Sales and QMat SORTCO, presents the PURITY CONCEPT V from SIKORA for inspection and analysis of plastic pellets