Open house report | news Engel showcases innovation
Some 3,000 people from around the world attended Engel’s triennial symposium in Linz, Austria, where the company unveiled its latest innovations and 2015 HL Awards winners.
Among the technologies on show from Engel at its triennial symposium in Austria the most notable did not involve plastic at all. The company announced that it has agreed with US-based Liquidmetal Technologies an exclusive machine manufac- turing partnership, showing its first production system in operation during the event.
Metals shape up Developed from work carried out at the California Institute of Technology back in the 1980s, Liquidmetal exploits the ability of certain specific zirconium metallic alloys to be processed into amorphous structures. These non-crystalline alloys are extremely hard but also offer light weight, corrosion resistance, and elasticity levels of up to 10 times that of steel and twice that of titanium. More importantly, they can be processed by a modified injection moulding process. Engel demonstrated a
This production cell for oil monitoring systems at Schneegans Freuden- berg Silicon in Austria won an Engel HL award for economical automation
Liquidmetal production system based around a 110 tonne e-Motion fitted with a special injection unit comprising a simple melting chamber and piston. Slugs of metal are loaded into the chamber where they are heated by induction to molten form prior to injection into the thermo-regulated mould. Melt temperatures are in the region of 1,100˚C and the entire system must be maintained under vacuum to prevent oxidation. Engel Senior Vice President
Research and Development Products Gerhard Dimmler said the key challenge with the technique is to control injection, as unlike plastic the molten metal is very fluid and displays no compressibility. This means the injection piston must be stopped precisely to avoid damaging the machine or mould. “You cannot control the process on pressure because you have none,” he said. In the demonstration
Engel’s Liquidmetal moulding system processes high performance amorphous zircomium alloys
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system, which was producing two parts of a surgical forceps, pre-prepared ingots were loaded into the melting chamber through the fixed half of the mould by a standard Viper robot, which was also used to remove the parts. Cycle time was said to be around 150s. The technology is not low
cost – the alloys alone cost around €100/kg - but Engel
sees it appealing to companies needing to produce small, high value metal parts with complex geometries (although not for production of watches and certain electronics parts where Swatch and Apple already hold exclusive licenses).
Plastic innovations Back in the plastics processing sector, Engel announced a new rubber injection moulding machine designed for production of O-rings and gaskets. Based around a 300 tonne servo-hydraulic horizontal clamp, the machine has been optimised for production of these parts and is said to be one of the shortest on the market. The company also an-
nounced that its e-Speed hybrid packaging machine can now be supplied with a larger
July/August 2015 | INJECTION WORLD 13
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