Boy Machines Shows Its Full Range in Orlando

Boy Machines is showing six machines, from its smallest to its largest, plus its new robot lines. At the small end is the new Boy XXS micromolder (introduced at K 2016), with 7-ton clamp and shot capacity up to 9.3 g. This all-electric, tabletop unit has Boy’s standard cantilevered, two-platen clamp (though with just two diagonally arranged tiebars) and Procan Alpha controller. The system permits offcenter gating, adjustable vertically by up to 25 mm. Integral sprue and parts pickers are mounted under the safety gate.

The largest press from Boy Machines, Boy 100 E (110 tons) will produce LSR protective sleeves for cable ends in a 128-cavity mold from Elmet in 14 sec.

Use of retrofittable secondary injection units to convert standard machines to multicomponent molding will be shown by Boy Machines, producing a wine-bottle spout on a Boy 60 E by overmolding NAS styrene-acrylic with TPE using a Boy 2C S auxiliary injection unit. This machine demonstrates Boy’s energy-saving EconPlast insulated-barrel technology.

Other presses operating in the Boy booth are a Boy 25 E producing a clear magnifying lens, a Boy 35 E molding medical parts, and a Boy 35 EVV vertical/vertical press for insert molding.

Boy is also presenting its new-generation Procan Alpha 4 controller (first introduced at K 2016). It incorporates an OPC-UA server, which is becoming the new standard for implementing Industry 4.0 network connectivity. Procan Alpha 4 offers significantly improved MES (manufacturing execution system) function, doubling of the temperature-control accuracy, halving of the tolerances, and better position accuracy due to improved analog registration, which reportedly increases accuracy of the position sensors by a factor of 10.

What’s more, the processor’s reaction time has been sped up by a factor of eight or more—125 μsec vs. 1000 μsec (1 millisec) for the previous version. Cycle-time consistency is also said to be improved, with deviation tolerance of less than 10 millisec. Also improved is the hydraulic-pressure-dependent switchover to holding pressure with stroke monitoring. Temperature-control accuracy reportedly has been doubled—halving the previous tolerances.

Boy Machines is showing for the first time in the U.S. its LR 5 top-entry servo robot, said to be a good value for use with Boy 35 E to 100 E presses, integrated into the Procan Alpha machine control. Control integration is said to make it easy to move the robot program from one press or robot to another. The robot’s modular design allows for a choice of x-y-z axis lengths, and it comes with a rotating and swiveling gripper hand and safety enclosure. Payload capacity is 5 kg (11 lb). Boy is also showing its three-axis pneumatic picker, which is programmable through the Procan Alpha control.