TECHNOLOGY | DIGITAL MOULDING
Covid barrier is surmounted in multi-site project
Covid-19 lockdowns and travel restric- tions have disrupted the lives of count- less people and organisations every- where. In the case of Huf Hülsbeck & Fürst in Velbert, Germany, one of the headaches it created related to a design project for new support brackets for a German automobile maker. Virtual teamwork and support from Engel enabled it to commission three new moulds built in China and present good parts, produced in Romania, to its customer within just one week. The moulds were made by the group’s in-house mould making operation, Yantai Huf Tools, destined for implementation on a new Engel E-victory 400 machine in Arad, Romania. The support brackets are part of a complex assembly consisting of 40 individual components that Huf delivers fully assembled to OEMs. Huf is
the sole supplier for many car models. Because of the pandemic, the three moulds were sent to Romania without sample inspection, where start-up including qualification had to be mas- tered for the first time without the on-site support of the team from Germany. Instead, says Christian Muthenthaler, hotline processing engineer at Engel’s headquarters in Schwertberg, Austria, the set-up staff walked through the production floor using a video to show them what was going on. Using Engel’s E-connect.24 remote maintenance tool, Muthenthaler was able to track all the machine parameters in real time, give instructions or remotely control the machine directly. The process was not only ramped up in this way, but opti- mised across three locations, for all three moulds, inside a week.
determine the degree of wear and tear, enabling early detection and optimal maintenance costs to be pre-planned according to the end of the service life of each injection moulding machine. “At Fakuma, the company will present three
real-time diagnostic options that can be imple- mented across our entire machine series,” says Thorsten Thümen, Senior Director, Technology. “The first option helps to permanently maintain energy efficiency and power on our all-electric machines. The hydraulic option serves to decode oil parameters and maintain component quality. The third reliably monitors control voltage across the entire injection moulding machine series. Our ultimate goal is full monitoring of all critical components prone to wear.” For the DC voltage intermediate circuit supply- ing the individual drive axles and for the absorp- tion of generator power in Sumitomo (SHI) Demag all-electric IntElect machines, the company has developed a process that detects capacitance changes in the converter supply. This could be a result of aging of the electrolytic capacitors or electrical defects, for instance. The system continuously records the storage capacity of the capacitors and reports any ma- chine-relevant change as it occurs. In hydraulic machines, oil usage is the basis for
32 INJECTION WORLD | October 2021
Above: The Huf staff in Arad inspected the parts after every parameter change and reported back to staff in Velbert as well as to the Engel Application Engineering department in Austria
trouble-free operation, yet can also be an indicator of imminent damage, the company notes. Sumitomo (SHI) Demag offers additional measurement sensors for monitoring two relevant oil parameter groups during machine operation. Jan Taufer, Project Manager for Condition Monitoring, says: “A particle monitor continuously records the number and size of particles contained in the fluid.” If a violation of the parameterised warning or alarm limit occurs, a corresponding error message is generated. A second measuring device detects the physical
properties of the oil, such as the water content, permittivity and conductivity. “Based on these measured values, the lubricant age can be deter- mined via internal algorithms, and can be ad- dressed before the chemical properties change to the extent that trouble-free operation can no longer be guaranteed,” says Taufer.
CLICK ON THE LINKS FOR MORE INFORMATION: �
www.wittmann-group.com �
www.engelglobal.com �
www.yizumi.com �
www.husky.ca �
www.arburg.com �
www.kraussmaffei.com �
www.sumitomo-shi-demag.eu �
www.huf-group.com
www.injectionworld.com
IMAGE: HUF HÜLSBECK & FÜRST
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