Open house report | news
Mucell technology, which he said can achieve higher levels of foaming of up to 15%. “Many customers already have very good experience with Mucell and will want to stay with that because they have adjusted their development to it,” he said.
Arburg also demonstrated
The ProFoam system offers an alternative to Mucell for lightweighting applications
Lightweight focus Lightweight technologies featured heavily among the more than 40 injection moulding demonstration exhibits during the open house, including the company’s ProFoam technology. This provides an alternative to the Mucell microcellular moulding process (developed by US- based Trexel and also demon- strated at the event). ProFoam uses a sealed feed hopper and plasticising system that allows gas to be introduced into the process with the raw material. The advantage of this, accord- ing to Gaub, is that little special equipment is required while the entire system operates at a lower pressure. “Propellant is drawn into
the screw with the granules and while plasticising the gas is dissolved into the melt. As long as it is under pressure the gas stays in the melt; when injected into the mould the gas comes out,” Gaub said. “The benefit is that the moulding machine and the screw is all standard; you only have the small deviation that you need to seal the nozzle and the end of the screw.”
www.injectionworld.com The use of standard
components means that the entire system can be quickly switched between machines to provide improved production flexibility. However, it also means that the ProFoam technology can be used with materials such as long fibre reinforced thermoplastics (LFTs) that typically suffer degradation in the intensive mixing section of a Mucell screw, according to Gaub. In addition, dissolving the gas over the entire plasticising phase means gas pressure can be kept to 50bar rather than the 100-200bar typical for Mucell (which in many countries means less onerous factory safety considerations). The technology was running on a hybrid Allrounder 630H machine producing a 136g electronic housing in PA6 on a 35s cycle. Gaub said the use of the ProFoam technology resulted in a 10% weight saving and 20s cycle time reduction. He said Arburg sees ProFoam as an alternative rather than a replacement for Mucell and he emphasised the machine maker will continue to work with Trexel and support its
its Fibre Direct Compounding (FDC) technology for produc- tion of LFTs on the moulding machine during the moulding cycle. Running on a hydraulic Allrounder 820S machine with a Multilift Select 25 robot, the technology was being used to produce an automotive window cable drive housing in glass reinforced PP. FDC works by feeding fibres that are cut to length from continuous rovings directly into the plasticising unit. It is claimed to allow longer fibre lengths to be used compared with pre-compound- ed LFTs (up to 50mm) while fibre breakage during processing is reduced. Users also have the flexibility to change the glass content on the machine while material costs are said to be reduced.
Implanting ideas In the medical area, Arburg showed an all-electric GMP-compliant stainless steel
Allrounder 370 A producing PEEK bone implants in a clean room environment. The machine was running a two-cavity mould producing the 0.7g parts in Vestakeep PEEK from Evonik on a 23s cycle time. It also showed production of single-use syringe bodies on a 570E Golden Electric all-electric machine running a 12s cycle. The machine was equipped with a gear-driven ejector to allow full synchronisation of ejection with mould opening. “If the parts don’t fall perfectly you have to keep the mould open longer. It is only fractions of a second but this is important in such fast cycle applications,” said Gaub. Arburg’s capability in
turnkey high performance packaging systems was demonstrated in a system for production of IML decorated tubs that was running on a hybrid Allrounder 570H machine in packaging specification on a 1.95s cycle time. The system used a four-cavity mould and IML automation from Brink and featured full overlap of functions during the cycle. The 3.55g parts were moulded in PP from Borealis (BJ998MO). ❙
www.arburg.com
IML tubs produced on a hybrid Allrounder machine using Brink automation
March/April 2017 | INJECTION WORLD 17
PHOTO: ARBURG
PHOTO: INJECTION WORLD
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