Aluminium moulds from L??¤pple use a modular frame to cut cost in prototype or small production series

(Published November 2007)

While German companies account for the largest single national exhibitor grouping, exhibitors from abroad now make up around 40% of the total, an indication of just how international this event has become. In numbers terms, Italian exhibitors lead the international groupings, as last year, with a 14.3% share, followed closely by China with 12.8% (up from 7.8% in 2006). Turn the measure to floorspace, however, and China takes first place. France, The Netherlands, Switzerland and Portugal complete the leading international exhibitor group.

Conventional mouldmaking remains a key focus of the Euromold show. Semi-finished aluminium products producer Almet will display its new Alumold 1-500 mould plates, which are claimed to show “near constant strength up to the core of the plate”. The company says the plates provide a 50% weight saving over steel while the faster cutting reduces mould cost by 20-40%. Cycle times are faster, too.

L?pple Formenbau uses aluminium to make large prototype and small series moulds in a modular design. It is particularly strong in automotive applications and will show tooling for moulding car bumpers. The company says its modular frame construction enables up to 35% of tool cost to be saved compared with conventional tooling, enabling mouldings to be produced faster without compromising on final part quality.

Different tools for production of a variety of plastics parts can all be fitted within the same frame, leading to “enormous time and cost savings“, according to company chairman Wolf-Peter Graeser. Typical changeover times of 30 minutes are achievable.

With the L?pple Formenbau plant in Heilbronn now at full capacity, production recently moved to a new plant in Züttlingen with a consequent tripling of capacity. Aside from mould production, L?pple is equipped with two Krauss-Maffei injection moulding machines with clamping forces of 3,200 and 4,000 tonnes, the smaller capable of gas assist moulding.

Design software specialist Delcam, which says that it now ranks as the world’s leading supplier of CAM software and services to the mould, tool and die industry in the industry’s CIMdata report – announces several software upgrades. These include improved speed for the Toolmaker mould design package. With its Power Features parametric tool design, mould components now react automatically when placed into an assembly with fit-features added to connecting components.

The software now automatically creates corresponding hole features when a designer adds an ejector pin to a mould assembly, and tolerances between components are defined automatically. If the pin is then moved, all associated holes and data move with it. Standard component sizes are recommended when available from catalogues built within the system, minimising the need and extra time and cost for non-standard components.

With bioplastics proving increasingly attractive to end users, mould components supplier introduces its Eco-Smart hot runner. This is claimed to be the only nozzle assembly that is optimised for processing biodegradable starch-based resins and PLA. The new nozzle has high wear and corrosion resistance and a modified thermal profile allowing for PLA’s sensitivity to elevated temperature.

Hasco is claiming improved flexibility for its new Z10710 series needle valve, which it says has been developed to address problems with conventional single-shot needle valves leading to weld line production on flat surfaces. The new design is also offered with a wider choice of nozzle lengths and diameters and is said to allow results achieved on single-cavity development moulds to be transferred to multi-cavity production tooling.

The Z10710 comes in two sizes and can be combined with Hasco’s Techni Shot and Valve Shot nozzles with nozzle lengths up to 300mm. The needle-valve unit can be used as a single centrally mounted nozzle in the centre of a mould or as a drive unit mounted between the manifold and nozzle.

Hasco expects the new needle valve to be of particular interest for stack and tandem moulds, as the drive system can easily accommodate back-to-back arrangements, reducing the overall height of the centre of the stack in terms of gate-to-gate distance to 250mm.

Rapid prototyping and manufacturing technology is also a key Euromold feature. Sector consultancy Terry Wohlers Associates says rapid manufacturing by additive fabrication techniques is “enabling radically different approaches to design, manufacturing, and supply chain management, as well as product sales and distribution”.

In his latest survey of the sector – taking in the views of 29 system manufacturers and 56 service providers covering 5-7,000 end customers – Wohlers estimates that sales growth has accelerated from 9.6% in 2006 to 11.7% in 2007.

Wohlers identifies the recent development of “layer-at-once” sintering processes, such as Selective Mask Sintering, as a threat to the sales of conventional laser sintering hardware. Developed by the Swedish company Sintermask Technologies (formerly Speed Part), the Selective Mask Sintering technology uses infra-red instead of laser sintering and is especially fast with a 10-20s layer process time with glass reinforced polyamide powder. Three systems were sold in 2006, capable of building parts up to 300mm by 210mm by 500 mm. List price is €149,000.

Wohlers also sees potential in the High Speed Sintering system under development by Loughborough University in the UK together with 3D systems and Xaarjet, which uses jets of “dark liquid” on a white polyamide powder with IR radiation employed to sinter the material.

Meanwhile, 3D Systems is showing its V-Flash Desktop Modeler and new InVision XT 3-D Modeler for the first time at Euromold. The former, with its Film Transfer Imaging (FTI) technology, has the capability to make models “within hours at home, school or office workstations”, while the latter is intended for the office environment and is able to integrate melt-away supports.

The company has also made its DuraForm EX plastic laser sintering material, which offers the toughness of injection-moulded PP or ABS, available in black as well as the original white colour. DuraForm EX is designed for use with the company’s Sinterstation Pro and Sinterstation HiQ equipment.

The Accura material line is designed for use on 3D’s Viper Pro SLA System and the latest Accura 48HTR grade, which becomes available this quarter, has been designed for use in conditions of high humidity and temperatures up to 130°C. Still at the Beta test stage, the new Accura Xtreme plastic is said to produce surface quality as good as conventional injection moulding plastics materials.

FKM Sintertechnik, a member of the EOS-initiated e-manufacturing partnership, will exhibit a new rapid prototyping application – a professional underwater camera housing for German company UK-Germany where a laser sintered polyamide is used to replace aluminium.

UK-Germany had been making the housings in aluminium since 1990, but shorter digital camera product life cycles required a shift to a faster solution. An SLS prototype housing developed for a Fuji S3 Pro camera gained an IBNEX-certified explosion-protection rating, enabling its use in mines, oil and gas rigs and chemical plants. FKM’s production rapid-manufactured housing for the Nikon F6 is completely water tight and protects the camera in water down to a depth of five metres.

www.almet-metal.com

www.laepple.de

www.delcam.com

www.dme.net

www.hasco.com

http://www.sintermask.com

www.3dsystems.com

www.fkm-sintertechnik.de