"More than a machine"

This motto, chosen by Engel to present their system solutions at Fakuma 2015, encompasses numerous topics. Automation, engineering, process optimization and services are all considered to be an integral part of the Austrian multi-national's construction philosophy.

Through five innovative applications for the automobile, technical moulding, teletronics, packaging and medical sectors, the manufacturer aimed to demonstrate at the fair how their machines and cells deliver maximum performance to achieve top production results, thanks to using intelligent components and networking. The medical sector, in particular, is considered by Engel to be one of the most driven in technological and application development, as underlined during the press conference held on October 14. In this area, the markets showing greatest potential are Germany, the United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries.

The “inject 4.0” concept was also presented during the press conference. Production, quality and flexibility are today key for being competitive, however in order to reach excellence in results, it is no longer sufficient to bring into play the best solution for injection moulding. It is vital to also unlock the full potential the solution offers. The true aim of this concept is to come up with the "smart factory”, which would propel a similar leap in quality for the 4.0 industry.

One of the products developed for this is iQ clamp, another tool for defect-free production. Systems capable of self-regulating and managing remote assistance features improve process capacity and quality and are fundamental tools for a smart factory. This new software automatically calculates and adjusts the optimal clamping force for every different application based on a torque of thousands or hundreds of millimetres, the so called “mould breathing”.

The Viper linear robots have also been adopted to work towards the goal. Thanks to new active vibration control, they can respond not just to vibrations, but also to causes from external influences. Actively compensating structure-borne oscillations, positioning speed is improved and cycle times reduced.