Automation

A revived and growing automotive industry along with an overall strengthening in manufacturing made 2011 a banner year for robotics sales in North America. New statistics released by the Robotics Industries Assn. (RIA) last week (Feb. 2), showed a total of 19,337 robots valued at $1.7 billion were sold to companies in North America, beating the previous record of 18,228 robots sold in 2005.

One of the interesting medical demonstrations at NPE 2012 will be molding of components in a multi-cavity mold for SHL, a major Swedish producer of drug delivery devices.

It will be representative of one of the medical market trends to look for at this year's NPE: An increasing emphasis on technologies that help reduce costs. Higher tooling cavitation is one approach; another is integrated, highly productive systems.

Highlighting its expertise as a system solution provider, Engel (Schwertberg, Austria) will show two auto-related, highly integrated and automated manufacturing cells at the upcoming NPE 2012 show in Orlando, Florida this April.

Even truck drivers crave for a more comfortable driving environment and molded parts with soft touch-surfaces that can be produced in just a single process step by applying the Dolphin-method are reportedly  making an essential contribution to promote this trend.

KraussMaffei's new assembly hall for automation products is working at full capacity just a little more than one month after production there began on Nov. 1. The new assembly hall at KM's Schwaig, Germany plant was commissioned on Dec. 8 during an official ceremony; ground was broken on the expansion on April 12. The new production area, has nearly tripled the company's assembly area for robots, boosting it from 670 to 1720 sq m.

The Fraunhofer Project Centre for Composites Research at the University of Western Ontario has installed a compression molding press and compounding equipment supplied by Dieffenbacher Group (Eppingen, Germany) in order to further research efforts directed at composite materials for use in automotive applications.

A German Government-supported project promoting "research for future production" presented its findings on the SpriForm process for lightweight structural components at a closing event hosted recently by one of the project partners: KrausMaffei (Munich, Germany),

Teklas (Gebze, Turkey) has recently started to produce fluid-carrying tubes for automobiles in high volumes using water-assisted injection molding technology (WIT). The parts use a special grade of Ultramid A3HG6 WIT polyamide (PA) developed for the process by BASF (Ludwigshafen, Germany).

Training and educational sites in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Michigan, and California have all taken delivery of machinery, equipment and training resources supplied by Wittmann Battenfeld in 2011, as part of that company's efforts to help train tomorrow's plastics workers.