At the Arburg Exhibit, ‘Seeing Is Believing’

At NPE this year, Arburg is presenting nine exhibits, ranging from its largest machine ever (730 tons) to micromolding. For Friedrich Kanz, president and CEO of Arburg’s U.S. operation, all this is meant to communicate three things: “We want to give a picture of the breadth of the Arburg portfolio. We also want to show what we offer besides products—that we are an expert solutions provider. And we want to convey that U.S. molders can rely on the local Arburg organization, because we have a full-blown support structure right here in the U.S.”

Regarding his first point, visitors to the Arburg booth (W1325) will find not only its big new Allrounder 1120 H press and LSR-on-LSR micromolding, but demonstrations of high-speed, thin-wall packaging; lightweight automotive composites with fiber direct compounding (FDC); medical molding; vertical insert molding; individualized production of high-volume parts using Industry 4.0 connectivity; and industrial additive manufacturing with the freeformer 3D printer.

And, as Kanz noted, these are not just single machines pumping out parts, but integrated cells with linear and articulated robots; integrated quality checks (like checking the weight consistency of composite molded parts); automated insert loading and plasma pretreatment; and robotic post-mold assembly—most notably the snapping together of a step stool from eight pieces in a family mold on the Allrounder 1120 H.

When it comes to depth of support and capabilities as a solutions provider, Kanz says, “Seeing is believing. In our booth you will find a large contingent of application engineers and turnkey automation engineers. They act as consultants in the pre-sales phase of project development with the customer, and they perform factory acceptance tests of machines and complete cells, right at our facility in Rocky Hill, Conn.

“And when visitors see our solutions here at the show, our experienced engineers are waiting at the demonstration cells to explain in detail all of what’s involved.” For example, when it comes to Industry 4.0, Arburg personnel will make clear that it is more than a buzzword for this company, which Kanz says “has quite a history of digitalized production going back more than 30 years. Our experts can explain the practical context of Industry 4.0 for today’s molders.”