ARBURG is bringing its largest delegation yet of customers and companies to its parent company’s Technology Days exhibition in Lossburg, Germany this week.
Arburg Allrounder
The injection moulding machine company will take 68 people, from 34 companies including 26 customers, to the three-day exhibition at the their headquarters in the Black Forest, which itself expects to break records.
ARBURG's Technology Days in 2014 attracted 6,900 people and the company expects to surpass that this year, with customers, journalists and technology integrators worldwide booked to visit the event, which displays a huge variety of application technology.
In all, 45 different applications will be demonstrated covering many industry sectors that will showcase ARBURG’s range of products and services. With a push in manufacturing technology globally to be more efficient, the Technology Days' theme this year is 'efficient from product design to finished part'. The Tech Days aim to display both ARBURG’s wide range of moulding technologies – injection moulding, micro-moulding, physical foaming of plastics and now additive manufacturing – and underline its focus on efficient production.
Products include the exciting new freeformer, ARBURG’s first additive manufacturing machine that launches this year. The freeformer uses ARBURG plastic free-forming technology (AKF) to produce fully functional parts from 3D-CAD data using standard granulates without requiring a mould.
Three freeformer machines will work in sync with an ALLROUNDER moulding machine to fabricate office scissors, which are part-moulded then additive manufactured. These techniques will demonstrate examples of Industry 4.0 in practice, including 'mass personalisation', a pervasive trend in manufacturing.
The freeformer becomes commercially available in the UK and Ireland in the autumn.
A demonstration area entitled the 'Efficiency Arena' will demonstrate eight stations, each highlighting an aspect of production efficiency. They are: Product design, mould technology, machine technology, periphery technology, configuration, process integration, process control, and production planning.
Other application highlights include a micro-injection demonstration for the moulding of very small parts, where the new EUROMAP 5 micro injection unit will be presented as part of a special micro production cell.
Also lightweight forming will be demonstrated by ARBURG’s ProFoam and MuCell techniques that physically form plastics. These techniques differ to typical injection moulding, by injecting gas in an overcritical state into the melting plastic to create fine structures.
The event will also display Particle-foam Composite Injection Moulding, or PCIM, using an ALLROUNDER 470 S with integrated foaming system. This uses a mobile Agilus six- axis robot for material delivery.
The event will provide detailed demonstrations of a range of application-specific demonstrations, including packaging, medical, optics and electronics.
The British group includes companies in the medical, industrial filter, electronics, packaging, automotive and mould-making sectors.
Managing Director of ARBURG Colin Tirel said: "I am delighted to accompany nearly 70 UK customers and colleagues to ARBURG's increasingly famous Technology Days. The event, housed at Lossburg’s impressive facilities, is a well organised, very thorough demonstration of not only ARBURG’s products but the full suite of what is capable in moulding machine and associated technology market now. Everyone will learn a great deal about production efficiency."
