ENGEL at Plast Eurasia 2022
Schwertberg, Austria – Maximum output with maximum quality consistency – at Plast Eurasia 2022 from 23 to 26 November in Istanbul, Turkey, ENGEL, the injection molding machine manufacturer and systems solution expert headquartered in Austria, will be presenting how the perfect interplay of injection molding machine, peripherals, automation and Industry 4.0 can combine these requirements with high cost-effectiveness and efficiency. Live on show: the production of liquid silicone blade valves on a tie-bar-less e-victory injection molding machine.
Whether in cars, medical technology products or packaging, blade valves are used in a very wide range of applications. What all of these applications have in common is the very strict process consistency requirements in terms of injection moulding production. The precision of the small parts is safety-relevant. It is essential to combine this requirement of quality with maximum efficiency and cost-effectiveness in mass production. The production cell at the ENGEL stand leverages the quality and efficiency potential for the production of blade valves in the best possible way. It combines an e-victory injection moulding machine and smart digital assistance with innovative mould and plasticising technology from NEXUS Elastomer Systems, Austria. Production is fully automated in a 64-cavity mould with an ENGEL easix articulated robot and an integrated vision control system for 100 percent quality control.
Featuring tie-bar-less servo-hydraulic clamping and electric injection units, the injection molding machines from the ENGEL e-victory series are predestined for precision applications with LSR. The electric ENGEL injection unit ensures high-precision injection. On top of this, the machine design features of this model support low-flash, rework-free processing of low-viscosity materials. The moving platen follows the mold precisely while clamping force is being built up, which results in excellent platen parallelism. Patented force dividers ensure that the clamping force is distributed evenly over the entire platen face. Even for large multiple-cavity molds, the cavities near the outer edge of the platen are kept closed with exactly the same clamping force as those nearer the center.
It is in cases of batch fluctuations in the raw material, or environmental conditions, for example, due to weather conditions, that digitalisation comes into its own. Equipped with the iQ weight control smart assistance system from ENGEL’s inject 4.0 portfolio, the injection moulding machine continuously analyses the injection profile and readjusts quality-relevant process parameters in the same cycle whenever deviations from the reference cycle occur.
The excellent accessibility and the space available in the mold area are unique on this tie-bar-less injection molding machine. Where multiple-cavity molds are used, smaller machines than the mold size would normally dictate can be used in many cases. This keeps both investment outlay and operating costs low. At the same time, the productivity per unit of area, a key efficiency indicator in many operations, is boosted.
The ENGEL easix articulated robot ensures optimum space utilisation on the automation side and also requires very little headroom. It connects the injection moulding machine with camera-based quality control and the discharge station and adapts flexibly if additional process units need to be retroactively integrated upstream or downstream of the injection moulding process.
NEXUS designed the 64-cavity mould with a demoulding device; this means that the parts can be picked up very easily and quickly by the end-of-arm tooling on the easix robot.
For high-precision control of the fill quantity, the cold runners in the mould are equipped with electric needle shut-off systems. NEXUS’s Timeshot technology controls the fill quantity as a function of the injection time. Each cavity can be controlled individually, even in very large moulds with up to 128 cavities.
NEXUS also specifically developed the ServoMix X20 LSR dosing system, which ensures air-free dosing of the liquid silicone rubber, for use on the smallest footprint. Via OPC UA, it is networked with the injection molding machine. What becomes clear at Plast Eurasia is how networking makes production more transparent and reliable and how work processes are accelerated.