Innovative Design of Latex Gloves Production Lines via Modular Industrial-sized Prototypes

Abstract

Abstract An innovative design of continuous latex gloves production lines was introduced in work. A modular approach to the designing process was described and key technologies were identified. Based on these technologies, industrial-sized prototypes were constructed and tested. The objectives were largely to reduce the production cost by some means such as reducing the thermal energy usage, shortening the length production line and time and decreasing the number of stationed workers. As a proof of concepts, prototypes of drying oven and stripping machine were constructed and the vulcanization experiments were carried out. The results were promising, for instances, the new drying oven with outside chain was projected to be able to reduce the thermal energy loss by approximately 12% compared to the traditional design and the stripping machine was shown to be able to vertically remove latex gloves from formers while occupying less space and potentially using fewer workers. From the vulcanization experiment, it was shown that the vulcanization time could be significantly shortened by pre-vulcanization and drying process.