Engel’s Auto Event Comes to North America for the First Time

The free Engel trend.scaut America 2016 event will take place Wednesday, June 29 at the Laurel Manor Banquet & Conference Center in Livonia, Mich., where speakers will include Stefan Engleder, who will take over as Engel’s chairman effective Dec. 1. Engleder will present on Engel’s inject 4.0 program for smart factories. Drew Winter and Haig Stoddard of WardsAutomotive will present on emerging technologies and trends in automotive and a sales/production forecast, respectively, while ExxonMobil Chemical’s Larry Gros offers a global energy outlook. Magna’s Jim Moore will provide a Tier One’s perspective on trends and challenges in automotive, while Pal Swaminathan of Lanxess will address next-generation thermoplastic composites for automotive, as will Engel’s own Peter Egger. Levi Kishbaugh of Trexel and Steve Jarzynski of Hi-Tech Mold & Engineering Inc. round out the technical program.

                       

Following the presentations, machine exhibits and a reception will be held at the SA Engineering Technology Center also in Livonia. In May, Trexel announced an agreement on a strategic partnership with SA Engineering to create a “collaborative incubator” at the site. The center has five Engel injection molding machines ranging in clamp force from 285 to 3500 tons, with three of those presses capable of applying Trexel’s MuCell technology.

 

For the event, an Engel duo 16050/1650 will mold a luggage compartment for Daimler using Engel’s coinmelt injection compression technology and a Georg Kaufmann Formenbau mold. Engel notes that injection-compression molding allows for distortion-free parts with a high-quality reproduction of surface details and thinner wall thicknesses compared to compact injection molding. The machine is also equipped with Engel’s flomo compact temperature control water manifold with electronic flow monitoring.

 

A tiebarless Envel victory 1350/285 will use the company’s watermelt method to manufacture clutch pedals. In this application, the injection of water into a cavity partially filled with plastic melt ensures uniform wall thickness throughout the clutch pedal, and no sink marks despite the complex part geometry.




An Engel duo 2550/660 US two-platen injection molding machine with Trexel MuCell technology will mold an automotive reservoir. By introducing gas in a supercritical state, MuCell creates uniform stress in molded parts. The Trexel gas dispensing unit is integrated into the machine’s CC300 control, so it can be monitored and regulated via the machine display. This machine also showcases Engel’s ecodrive, which the company says allows for hydraulic machines with nearly the same energy usage of all-electric machines.

 

A two-platen Engel duo 7050/1000 wide-platen machine will run a single cavity, hot runner, spoiler mold, utilizing HRS FLEXflow sequential valve gate system from HRSflow (San Polo di Piave, Italy). The servo-Driven valve gate reportedly assures accurate, easy and flexible control of pressures and flow rates during the whole injection process by precisely adjusting position, acceleration, velocity and stroke. The FLEXflow technology allows clamp force to be reduced while improving surface quality and reducing warpage. 


 

Finally, an Engel 3500 will showcase complete integration with a six-axis robot. The automation controls are fully integrated with the press’s CC300 control unit. Engel says with this integration, the machine and robot access a shared database, enhancing process security and operator convenience while achieving optimal production efficiency.