Plastics News Daily Report - May 10, 2018 - 30

30 ‹ PLASTICS NEWS DAILY REPORT ‹ May 10, 2018

Wittmann Battenfeld shows 4.0 technology, new presses
Wittmann Battenfeld Inc. is introducing new injection molding machines, robots and auxiliary equipment at NPE2018. But Industry 4.0
was the big subject officials covered at a May 8 news conference.
The machinery company calls
its version Wittmann 4.0. Six injection molding machine work cells
with integrated robots, automation, material handling and auxiliary equipment - all link together at
its booth.
Coming up with industrywide
standard interfaces and communication protocols to get to actual
Industry 4.0 could take about 10
years, said David Preusse, president of Wittmann Battenfeld USA.
Once trade groups come up with
the standards, then equipment
companies have to implement
them in their products.
"The goal of VDMA and Euromap
is to have a global standard," he
said. "It's going to take some time
before all the robot makers and all
the machinery manufacturers will
get on board with Industry 4.0."
One goal is to have machinery
be able to optimize itself to run the
best parts possible, most efficiently.
"The machinery is getting smarter than man. It's getting close to AI
[artificial intelligence]," he said.
Austria-based parent company

Plastics News photo by Michael A. Marcotte

By Bill Bregar
Plastics News Staff

Wittmann Battenfeld Inc. is introducing the Eco Power Express 400 at
NPE2018.

BOOTH W3742
WITTMANN BATTENFELD INC.
Wittmann Battenfeld GmbH is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the
major deal in 2008 where robot and
auxiliary maker Wittmann Group
bought the Battenfeld injection
molding press business. The company is holding a celebration June
13-14 at the headquarters plant in
Kottingbrunn, Austria.
Because of the combined businesses, Preusse said Wittmann
Battenfeld has been working on
integrating machines in a cell, in-

jection presses and auxiliaries for
some time.
Wittmann Group CEO Michael
Wittmann said the company, which
employs 2,300 people worldwide,
generated 2017 sales of $490 million, a 7 percent increase from
2016. The target for this year, he
said, is $535 million to $540 million.
He said business is good for the
machinery industry.
"The lead time has increased significantly, not only for components
but for our machines as well," Wittmann said.
After some expansions, Wittmann Battenfeld will be able to
make 5,000 robots in 2018 from its

four robot manufacturing operations, he said.
Wittmann Battenfeld is introducing several new equipment products at NPE2018:
* A high-speed packaging machine, the 440-ton EcoPower
Xpress, shown for the first time in
North America, is a direct-drive,
all-electric injection press. It is
molding water bottle caps on a
96-cavity mold.
* The new X Series robot and the
R9 robot control system.
* A temperature-control unit
featuring the new SpeedDrive option with a motor speed-controlled
pump and several other options
to make the injection molding process more efficient.
* The new S-Max series of granulators.
* The Aton H portable dryer,
with Wittmann 4.0 interfacing and
other features.
Other work cells running at
NPE2018 include a 198-ton EcoPower press molding a shampoo
flip-top lid made from polypropylene with a four-mold cavity and a
121-ton EcoPower Medical clean
room press molding polypropylene pipettes with an eight-cavity
mold.
In another cell, a 937-ton MacroPower press is making a spoiler
on a single-cavity mold, equipped
with five servo valve gates. The
cell also shows its condition monitoring system for preventive and

predictive maintenance.
Another work cell features a 121ton SmartPower press molding
wood-plastic composite building
blocks with an eight-cavity mold.
The sixth work cell features
a 15-ton, two-shot MicroPower
press with two parallel injection
units and a rotary disk molding
a plug inside the recording head
of a vinyl record player. A builtin camera system inside the machine allows for automatic quality
inspection of the parts, the company said.
Demonstrations of the Wittmann
4.0 technology will allow molders
to experience its capabilities firsthand and "guide them on the pathway to true 4.0," the company said.
Wittmann 4.0 features what the
company calls its "Plug & Produce"
feature, where as soon as an operator selects a given mold data set on
the machine's control system, the
appropriate settings are applied
to all other appliances in the production cell. Communication takes
place via an Ethernet network operating with standardized OPC UA
protocol.
The Plug & Produce feature -
made possible with the Wittmann
4.0 router, which links all the appliances in a production cell and
externally assigns the cell an individual IP address - also means
machine operators no longer have
to sign up for Information Technology 101.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Plastics News Daily Report - May 10, 2018