Canon, a specialist in optical, imaging, and industrial products, has entered the plastics recycling machinery business.
The Japan-based company has been part of the plastics industry for decades through its subsidiary Canon Mold. Canon Mold manufactures injection moulds for high-quality applications including automotive, consumer electronics, and medical devices.
Now, Canon has launched a new plastic sorting machine to enable faster and more accurate sorting of black plastics.
The TR-S1510 machine features Canon’s tracking Raman spectroscopy technology, which the company announced in July 2023.
The technology combines Raman spectroscopy with a tracking mechanism. Raman spectroscopy is a detection method that uses laser light to illuminate plastic pieces to obtain molecular information about the material. Whilst the method can in theory be applied to black plastics, it would take too long to identify black pieces because they reflect much less light than other colours. In a recycling plant sorting differently coloured plastics at high speed and throughput, then, the technology is often insufficient to detect black plastics.
To address this issue, Canon has supplemented Raman spectroscopy with its measurement and control equipment to allow for tracking. Canon’s PD-704 contactless measurement device enables accurate and fast measurement of objects on rapidly moving conveyor belts. Canon’s GM-2020 Galvano Scanner Motor, in turn, continuously moves the position of the laser, allowing the beams to accurately track objects transported on the conveyor belt. That way, plastic pieces are continuously illuminated by the laser, allowing more light to be reflected. That means black plastic pieces are exposed to enough light to be accurately identified in a high-speed sorting process.
The TR-S1510 sorting machine maintains a conveyor speed of 1.5 meters per second and can sort up to 1 ton of plastic per hour. It can be customised according to customers’ throughput and installation space by adapting the measurement and tracking devices or the combination of conveyor belts, Canon said in a statement.
The machine has been available for orders since its release on June 6.