In 2006, when it became necessary to do large numbers of high-speed impact testing on plastics, Sabic once again looked to Zwick for a robotic testing system.
The result was a six-axis robot system that transports the circular specimens from a magazine and, depending on the required test procedure, the specimen is either loaded into the testing machine, or first placed in a special temperature chamber.
This chamber consists of a carousel with 80 slots to hold each specimen.
Once the specimens are loaded into the impact tester the instrumented plunger hits them with a speed of up to 12 metres per second.
Material properties are then determined directly from the force-time diagram.
In addition, the specimen remains are photographed for visual examination later.
