Tooling: New Hot-Runner & Mold Components Shown at Fakuma

Hasco (U.S. office in Fletcher, N.C.) will show off a large crop of new developments at the Fakuma show this month in Germany, including these:

• New HT (high-temperature) cooling-system components use special materials in the sealing elements that can resist long-term service temperatures up to 250 C (482 F). Conventional FKM rubber (such as Viton) seals become hard and brittle under such conditions, resulting in leaks. In addition, Throughput of the HT couplings has been increased by up to 10%.

• For hot runners, Hasco has filled out its Vario Shot nozzle line, introduced at K 2016, with two new sizes, Types 40 and 50. In addition, there are new screw-in models that  eliminate leaks and allow production of custom drop-in manifold systems. Also new is the budget-priced H1250 control unit (bottom photo below) for one or two zones (such as a single nozzle with separate zones for body and tip). It offers soft start, boost, and standby functions, automatic monitoring of heaters and thermocouples, LED displays of set and actual temperatures, and 3600W/16A per zone over a temperature range of 30 to 500 C (86 to 932 F).

• For mold bases, new Z11 guide bushing without a shoulder is used if there is no supplementary mold plate to axially secure the bushing, or if the plate containing the guide bushing makes an additional demolding movement, such as with stripper plates. Axial displacement is prevented through the collar and the securing groove, into which fits a circular clip (“circlip”). Also new, the Z725 rotatable eye screw and Z715 load ring (top photo) allow maximum flexibility during lifting and transport of heavy molds. Both rotate 360° and support loads in all directions. Through its patented locking design, the eye screw can be attached and removed without tools.

• New A6500 custom nameplates for molds are printed by Hasco on white-coated aluminum. Customer-supplied label data can include inventory number, product name, production date, storage location, hazard or warning symbols, and even a picture of the end product. In the future, nameplates may be formatted through Hasco’s online portal.

• New pressure and adjustment plates (Z555, Z556, Z557) permit uniform alignment of the mold parting surfaces and readily offset height differences. The Z557 plates with lubrication grooves also can be used as sliding plates where there are inclined height differences in the parting line.

• New, modifiable Z530 sprue-puller insert comes as a blank to be configured by the moldmaker. The longer guide spigot of the puller insert is suited to gate inserts with a curved tunnel. In this way, the sprue can be guided out of the insert during ejection. An anti-rotation lock permits reliable mounting.

• Non-rotating ejector pins and flat ejector pins with two or four corner radii will also be introduced.

• The Hasco app features a new cartridge-heater calculator, which enables simple calculation online of heater output for a particular mold.