Bucher Emhart Glass, the leading global supplier of machinery and equipment to the glass manufacturing industry, unveiled its first BIS machine at an open house event hosted by Nampak in South Africa on 22–23 October 2013.
BIS is the latest addition to Bucher Emhart Glass’ range of IS machines, and the first new machine type since NIS was introduced in 2000. Like NIS, it offers the supreme precision of a fully servo-controlled high flexible machine, designed to handle a wide variety of containers, sizes and weights, in smaller quantities and with quicker job changes, as most of the existing mold can be fit (4 ¼ DG, 3”TG, 5” DG, 85 mm TG, 5 ½ DG as others).
BIS uses the parallel mold open/close technology pioneered on Bucher Emhart Glass AIS machines and is available in six-, eight-, ten- and twelve-section configurations. The first machine handles double- and is prepared for triple-gob 95 mm productions. A quad-gob 70mm version is under development and will make BIS a servo electric glass container production machine challenging the today’s arcuate pneumatic IS machine configurations designed on 4 1/4 , 5” and 5 ½ sections.
BIS was announced at Glasstec 2010 and successfully prototyped in 2011 at the Emhart Glass Research Centre in Winsor USA, before the first 12 section 140 mm DG was manufactured and sold to Nampak Glass, South Africa. In May 2013, the World’s FIRST BIS Machine was started up successfully.
Six months after start up, more than 20 Bucher Emhart Glass customers made the trip to Nampak’s plant to see the world’s first BIS machine in operation. They were able to hear directly from Nampak staff and managers about their positive experiences with the BIS machine. Mr. Bryne Sihlangu from Nampak brought it in his speech to the point: “There are many Good Reasons why BIS will replace 4 ¼, 5” and 5 ½ pneumatic machines!” Nampak’s Managing Director Mr. Stoney Steenkamp, 6 month after experiencing undisputable features and benefits decided to get a second BIS, going into operation mid of 2014.
