From 25-28 January, the OOO ENGEL will welcome its customers and partners to its stand at Interplastica in Moscow again.
The injection moulding machine manufacturer and system solution provider headquartered in Austria is making the huge potential of innovative digital solutions tangible by producing technical parts live on a tie-bar-less victory injection moulding machine.
Parts with strict requirements are being produced on a tie-bar-less ENGEL victory 80 injection moulding machine during the four days of the fair. Three smart assistance systems from ENGEL's inject 4.0 program ensure very high production efficiency accompanied by consistently high product quality: iQ weight control, iQ clamp control and iQ melt control.
In each individual cycle, iQ weight control analyses the pressure and speed profile during the injection phase and compares the measured values with a reference profile. The injection profile, the switchover point and the holding pressure are automatically adjusted to the current conditions. This means that fluctuations in the raw material and ambient conditions are automatically detected, and rejects are proactively prevented.
iQ clamp control determines the optimum clamping force for the injection moulding process in question based on mould breathing. In many cases, overmoulding and flash can therefore be reliably ruled out. On top of this, mould venting is improved and the mechanical load on the mould is reduced.
The third smart assistance system in this team is iQ melt control, which optimises the plasticising process. The software determines the optimum plasticising time for the application in question. Instead of plasticising at the maximum possible speed, the system fully leverages the part’s in-mould cooling time for the plasticising movement. This leads to improved melt homogeneity and is gentle on both the screw and the material, which in turn improves product quality.
“The smart assistance systems help to leverage the full potential of the injection moulding machine," says Waldemar Birkle, the managing director of OOO ENGEL in Moscow. The modular approach of ENGEL's inject 4.0 program makes it very easy for plastics processors to grasp the opportunities which digitalisation presents. "Even individual solutions such as the iQ products promise considerable benefits," says Birkle. "And it is thanks to these same solutions that the first steps towards the smart factory are being taken on many shop floors."
In terms of design, too, the victory injection moulding machine presented at Interplastica 2022 has a tie-bar-less clamping unit which maintains the parallelism of the mould mounting platens during clamping force build-up and injection. At the same time, the force dividers distribute the clamping force evenly over the mould mounting platens.
Because there are no tie bars in the way, the mould mounting platens can be fully used up to their very edges. This means that very large moulds, such as multi-cavity moulds or moulds with core-pulls, fit on relatively small injection moulding machines. This keeps both capital expenditure and operating costs low while enabling compact production cells. Further benefits of tie-bar-less technology include fast mould setup processes and efficient automation solutions.