EVENT PREVIEW | CHINAPLAS 2018


Right: Engel is connecting two Duo injection moulding machines to produce LED lenses at Chinaplas


Injection moulding machinery makers will be exhibiting their latest developments at Chinap- las 2018 taking place in Shanghai on April 24-27. Engel is one of the major machinery companies looking to take advantage of the opportuni- ties of China’s growing market. It


says China’s injection moulders are modernising machinery and adopting new technologies that help to raise production efficiency and product quality. “The investment climate in China is on a new high. Chinaplas will give a further boost to this trend,” says Gero Willmeroth, President Sales and Service of Engel Machinery Shanghai. For automotive moulders, Engel is showing two


Below: KraussMaffei says its MaXecution MES helps injection moulders towards the goal of digital production


linked Duo injection moulding machines produc- ing LED lenses made of PMMA with a thickness of 22mm for vehicle headlamps. The lens base bodies are produced on a Duo 1060/400 injection moulding machine in a 4-cavity mould. An Easix articulated robot is integrated in the production cell and removes the four parts and passes them to an external cooling station. After cooling, the robot takes the four preforms to the 4+4-cavity mould of a Duo 600H/600H/500 combi multi-component machine with rotary table. On this machine, two more PMMA layers are applied successively before the robot removes the finished lenses. This is the first time that Engel has demonstrated a complex multi-component process with inter- linked injection moulding machines at Chinaplas. Engel’s partners for this exhibit include Skymould (Ningbo/China), HRSflow (Hangzhou, China), Innolite (Aachen/Germany), Opsira (Weingarten, Germany) and Gimatic (Shanghai, China). For an electric vehicle application, Engel is


producing wire grommets made of liquid silicone rubber (LSR) for individual wires with a corresponding fine structure. A tie-bar-less E-Victory 50/80 injection


moulding machine with electric injection unit is used to process the extremely low-viscosity LSR with high precision and high efficiency. In this demonstration, the 4-cavity mould and the LSR dosing system, which can be integrated in the CC300 control of the E-Victory machine, come from Elmet. Another new application from Engel, this time in the medical sector, is pipette tips moulded under cleanroom conditions in a highly integrated production cell. A tie-bar-less E-Victory machine with a 32-cavity hot runner precision mould from Wellmei and high-speed automation from Waldorf Technik work together in an extremely compact space. Every 18 seconds, 96 pipette tips are discharged from the production cell, says Engel. The group is demonstrating its Industry 4.0 solutions on all its exhibits, but it is particularly highlighting its Inject 4.0 functionality on a tie-bar- less and fully electric E-Motion 80 TL injection moulding machine. KraussMaffei says Industry 4.0 solutions are also


“front and centre” at its Chinaplas 2018 stand. Industry 4.0 is an increasingly important topic for Chinese moulders, says the group. “The motivation for implementing Industry 4.0 is certainly increasing wages or maybe the desire for seamless documen- tation and tracking, such as in the automotive industry. This is a great opportunity for us to position ourselves as a premium manufacturer because Industry 4.0 requires both first-class machines and correspondingly high-performance automation, control systems and interfaces,” says Jörg Wittgrebe, Vice President of Sales, Injection Moulding Machine Department at KraussMaffei China. For the first time at Chinaplas, KraussMaffei is showing in live operation its MaXecution manufac- turing execution system (MES) which, it says, creates more transparency in production using productivity indicators concerning, for instance, overall equipment effectiveness, mould manage- ment and resources and statistics on machines and rejects. MaXecution is based on the Hydra MES from MPDV Mikrolab based in Germany. It is offered in three stages of expansion. KraussMaffei is exhibiting its GX 650-4300 machine, which it claims is the “fastest two-platen


24 INJECTION WORLD | March 2018 www.injectionworld.com


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