“The company had started to stagnate, so we have done several things over the past four years to help the company,” Kastner said. “First we have built up a cooperation with the university and the high schools because we think that is important. Second, in 2007, we started a formal R&D department also because we believe it is important to give our engineers the freedom to think about new ideas and bring them to new products.”

While ifw mould tec made it through the economic downturn quite well, Kastner explained that the economic crisis created conditions in which its customers began focusing on greater efficiency, which means cutting cycle times, and higher productivity in their molding operations. That is where the company’s R&D department contributed to ifw’s success over the past two years.

“Molds in the United States and Europe are more expensive, so we need to be inventive and creative, which is the only way we can survive,” said Kastner. “As long as we do this we’ll be successful.”
In 2008 the company added 1000m2 for engineering and assembly, and in 2009, ifw invested €1.3 million in building a new test center at the ifw mould tec site. Today, ifw is a global provider of high-tech tools for plastic pipe fittings.

Another company of the ifw Group is ifw Kunststofftechnik GmbH, which manufactured custom plastic components weighing from a few grams to over 25 kg, and has 20 Engel presses raning from 150- 1700 tons clamping force. Kastner said the ifw Group does e28-30 million annually in business.

At K, ifw is promoting its newest product, the Xpress Cooling System (XCS), which is being demonstrated in an Engel e-Victory 160 running a 2-cavity Y-fitting for 2-inch-diameter pipe on Stand 1C26. The XCS is a patent-pending cooling system integrated in the core and the cavity to transfer the heat much faster, resulting in uniform cooling and minimizing stress and part deformation, explained Sam Tehrani, ifw’s U.S. representative.

To prove out the new XCS cooling system, Tehrani said they ran a conventional mold, then ran a mold with the XCS cooling system to measure the difference in cycle time. “We found that we were able to reduce cycle time by 20%—from a 50-second cycle to a 28-second cycle.”

The 2-cavity mold ifw featured also has a collapsible core run by a CAM system instead of the conventional hydraulic system. Additionally, the part is gated using a pinpoint gate on the inside wall. The part running at ifw’s stand is made of polypropylene, but Tehrani said that the system runs PVC just as well with the same cycle-time savings.

“There has been a lot of interest at the show in cycle-time savings and increased production while also reducing costs,” Tehrani said. “Our R&D department gives us a big competitive edge in this highly competitive mold market.”

Also being promoted by ifw through its Tooler Systems Oy (Nastola, Finland) is its new electrically operated core pulling device, which can be combined with the company’s fully electrically operated unscrewing device. The axial and rotating movements can be controlled either separately or simultaneously. The company also created a new technology for multicomponent molding, the two-component molding and mold-integrated injection unit. “We have developed these innovative mold concepts that enable fittings and other parts with integrated gaskets to be produced using a two-component process,” said Tehrani.

For greater flexibility in production, ifw developed a mold-integrated injection unit that can be flanged to the mold itself, and enables two-component parts to be produced using a greater variety of injection molding machinery.

Tehrani said that ifw sells into 86 countries and manufactures 200-300 molds annually, some as large as one meter square. The company guarantees its molds for one-half million cycles, even with PVC, and offers its customers training upon delivery so molding technicians understand ifw’s innovative mold technology to get optimum performance from the mold.