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ENGEL is showcasing a comprehensive range of inject 4.0 products

ENGEL is showcasing a comprehensive range of inject 4.0 products

inject 4.0 is ENGEL's answer to the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The injection moulding machine manufacturer and systems expert, with headquarters in Schwertberg, Austria, is to present its inject 4.0 program at K 2016 from October 19th to 26th in Dusseldorf.

ENGEL is creating additional added value for its customers with new solutions for intelligent control and forward-looking maintenance – be the first – with ENGEL on stand C58, in hall 15 at K 2016.

The aim of Industrie 4.0 is a smart factory. With the help of the networking and integration of production systems, the systematic exploitation of machines, process and production data and the use of decentralised, intelligent assistance systems, the manufacturing processes in a smart factory continuously optimise themselves, making it possible to react very flexibly to the ever more quickly changing requirements. The result is greater efficiency, productivity, machine availability and quality.

ENGEL is making it possible to actually experience the smart factory at K 2016. For all three areas of the smart factory – smart machine, smart production and smart service – ENGEL already has solutions within the range today to support processors to enable their processes to tackle the new challenges. Industry 4.0 is nothing new for ENGEL – it has been current practice in many areas for a long time, and ENGEL is continuously further-developing its inject 4.0 programme. At ENGEL, experience meets innovation.

 
    fig. 1: smart factory means the systematic use of data, the networking of production cells, machines and components and decentralised use of adaptive assistance systems results in higher productivity, machine availability, quality and flexibility.


smart machine: compensating for any fluctuations before rejects are produced

The human-machine interface will play an increasingly important role in tomorrow's factory. As the processes become increasingly complex because of greater integration and automation, its management and control must become all the more simple and intuitive. Self-adapting, decentralised systems increase process capability and quality, without the machine operator having to assimilate additional specialist knowledge.

For example, the iQ software products from ENGEL continually analyse critical process parameters in order to identify and immediately compensate for deviations even before rejects are produced. While iQ weight control keeps the injected melt volume and the viscosity constant throughout the entire injection moulding process, including the holding pressure phase, the new iQ clamp control software determines the mould breathing to continually readjust the clamping force. Even if the environmental conditions change, or the granulate quality fluctuates, the software solutions keep the process constant and consistently ensure high product quality.

As mould temperature control also affects efficiency and quality, ENGEL already introduced an electronic temperature-control water manifold system at K 2010 and has continuously developed this further since then. ENGEL e-flomo monitors and documents all cooling and temperature control circuits of injection moulds and independently regulates either the flow volumes or differences in temperature. ENGEL is now going one step further for K 2016. ENGEL e‑flomo and temperature control unit merge at controller level to form a single unit. With the help of the new iQ flow control software, the pump speed is adapted automatically to current requirements based on the measurement values determined by ENGEL e-flomo. Whereas ENGEL e-flomo increases the process stability and therefore lowers the reject risk, the automatic speed adjustment ensures that temperature control requires less energy.

ENGEL will demonstrate during K 2016 how the potential of smart machine can be optimally exploited in practice with the manufacture of inject 4.0 logos on an all-electric, tie-bar-less ENGEL e-motion 80 TL injection moulding machine. Fluctuating process conditions will be simulated in the CC300 controller in order to monitor the automatic readjustment of the intelligent assistance systems on the injection moulding machine display.

 
    fig. 2: The intelligent assistance systems of the iQ product family, such as iQ weight control, balance out any process fluctuations, even before any rejects are produced.


smart production: high vertical and horizontal data integration

ENGEL's exhibition stand at K 2016 is already a regular small business with seven highly integrated and automated production cells plus the iQ demonstration injection moulding machine. All production cells are networked together using ENGEL e-factory to be able to view and analyse the current condition of the individual injection moulding machines, their utilisation and output from a central computer.

With ENGEL e-factory, ENGEL has its own MES (Manufacturing Execution System) in its product portfolio that is specifically tailored to the requirements of the plastics processing industry and achieves an extremely high level of vertical data integration. It even takes account of the number of cavities in the mould.

ENGEL e-factory ensures greater transparency. Bottlenecks and downtime are localised at a glance. Only in this way is it possible to optimally utilise the overall available capacity of machinery. The condition and process data transferred in real time is correlated both with quality and key business operating figures and analysed in a variety of ways. It then becomes particularly exciting if not only the production cells of an individual site but of a global production network are integrated using ENGEL e-factory. The processes can be optimised from the company headquarters, and colleagues are better supported locally.

ENGEL e-factory has a modular design. The solution is therefore adapted exactly to the processor's individual requirements and is able to grow with the system flexibly according to demand. The energy module is new to the K 2016 that allows the detailed presentation, analysis and optimisation of energy consumers. Energy enables ENGEL e-factory to control the start-up of the injection moulding machines and production cells automatically and reliably avoid any energy peaks. The electricity costs of the machinery are therefore reduced.

In many businesses, ENGEL already forms the basis for consistently tracking individual products through its entire development process right down to the raw materials. Data tracking is now standard in many more sectors, not just in the automotive and medical technology sectors. inject 4.0 will make traceability even simpler in the future. The inject 4.0 logos manufactured by ENGEL on the exhibition stand are marked singularly with an individually generated QR code. Visitors to the exhibition will also be able to get information about when and under what process conditions the injection moulded part was manufactured for a long time after K 2016 by using the QR code.


smart service: condition-based, predictive maintenance shows the way forward

To increase the machine availability of injection moulding machines and manufacturing cells, smart service relies on short routes, remote maintenance and a view into the future. The new ENGEL e-connect.monitor will make it possible to analyse the condition of process-critical machine core components in the live operation and reliably predict the risk of default. The condition-based, predictive maintenance makes it possible to exploit the service life of critical machine parts to the full and avoid any unplanned equipment stoppages that occur in spite of this. The regular condition monitoring supports process optimisation in the long term. Critical process settings that accelerate the wear of certain components are identified by analysing the wear parameters and are then subsequently avoided through process changes.

Whereas smart machine und smart production solutions fall largely within the processor's responsibility, there are benefits for smart service in several instances if ENGEL, as the supplier, is able to access certain data approved by the customer. Mutual trust is important for this but is not enough by far. For data transfer, ENGEL consistently uses state-of-the-art safety technologies and has its systems regularly checked by independent experts.

Furthermore, ENGEL jointly with its customers and partners is working to establish OPC UA (Open Platform Communication Unified Architecture) as a shared information mode in the plastics sector, even in the field of condition monitoring. The communication protocol offers great flexibility with its service-based and scalable structure, independent of any platform. In addition, safety features are already an integral part of the architecture.

To guarantee the stability of the CPU, the complex and the computation-intensive processing of data does not take place in the machine control unit but in server systems that ENGEL has designed especially for this. ENGEL develops the stored algorithms further and each is adapted on the system. This ensures that ENGEL's customers have access to the latest state-of-the-art technology at all times.

ENGEL at K 2016: hall 15, stand C58

  • autor:
  • ENGEL
  • MASTEX, spol. s r.o.

    MASTEX, spol. s r.o.

    ENGEL injection molding machines, industrial robots, production automation, peripherals, conveyor systems, manipulators.

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