“There is clearly a great deal of mutual interest in the further development of the Freeformer and Arburg Plastic Freeforming (APF). Let us achieve new advances from all the experience gathered”, were the motivating opening remarks from Eberhard Lutz, new director Freeformer Sales at Arburg, as he welcomed the around 40 participants to the third Freeformer User Day 2016 on November 29 in Lossburg, Germany. He emphasised that in cooperation with the Additive Manufacturing managers, international marketing will be further intensified in 2017.

Martin Neff, technology consultant for Plastic Freeforming, presented at first the improvements to the standard machines, which include for example a homogeneous temperature-controlled build chamber, discharge heads with extended service life and an optimised material feed. Many other measures have also contributed to further improve the process stability.

Theoretic fundamentals on data processing were explained by his colleague Christoph Linek from the Technology Development team. He went into detail on how, for example, a desired change in the layer thickness and fill density can be calculated mathematically. “Nine Steps for Material Qualification” was the title of the subsequent specialist presentation by Michael Salinas. The technology consultant for Plastic Freeforming highlighted all details in his presentation “From material preparation to component production”.

During the afternoon, participants had plenty of opportunity to try out what they had learned in practice “live” on three Freeformers and to discuss more in-depth questions with the experts. The topic of material qualification and the combination of theory and practice was evaluated as very positive by all the participants.

To round off the successful User Day, Eberhard Duffner, director Development and Plastic Freeforming, provided a concluding outlook on the innovations that his development team was currently working on in terms of materials and Freeformer technology. Some of this will already be on show at the Arburg Technology Days in March 2017.

Establishing the best possible worldwide service

The international service meeting in 2016 (December 6-7) was the seventh occasion on which Arburg’s service organisation had met in an information exercise and in order to further improve its worldwide services. Eckhard Witte, Service divisional manager at Arburg, welcomed the 45 participants from 32 different counties, who also included specialists from Arburg’s trading partners for the first time. He said that the main point during the event, which included interesting presentations on service-related topics, was for the participants to get to know one another through discussions and to build up a service network that lives and breathes through mutual regional and international interaction. He believed that this is the only way to establish and develop uniformly high-quality and efficient service for all Arburg customers.

In addition to comprehensive service-specific information on machines, peripherals and processes, as well as tours of the company that underlined the high level of integration in production at Arburg, the presentation of a new mobile service system marked a further focus on a more rational process in service. The mobile service system was piloted in depth in Poland and Switzerland in 2016 before it is rolled out in all subsidiaries on the basis of SAP in 2017. In a laptop-based approach, the software will enable the service technicians to coordinate more effectively, so that the work units can provide fast feedback and the work carried out for customers can be documented precisely.