Sepro launches 6 new products at Fakuma in a bid for more European market shareSepro launches 6 new products at Fakuma in a bid for more European market share

Fakuma 2012

Jean-Michel Renaudeau, managing director of the family-owned, France-based robotics supplier said in a press conference that his company, which generates 10% of its business in its native country, with 90% coming outside of France, has seen foreign demand drive its growth.

"Over the last four to five years, we have been booming overseas," Renaudeau said. Germany is among the markets beyond France's borders that Sepro is targeting, opening a new headquarters there in Dietzenbach, southeast of Frankfurt, which will be run by Dirk Schroeder.

Renaudeau said his company maintains a leadership position in the automotive market, as well as in automation for injection molding machines with more than 1000 tonnes of clamping force. With 300 employees and annual revenue of Euro 55 million, Renaudeau said the company's goal is to be the top supplier of automation systems to injection molders in Europe. Its market share in Europe stood at 14% in 2011, and the goal is to grow to a 20% share over the next three years.

Sepro has 31 distributors, and its own offices in the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, China, the U.K., and Germany. In China, it has service space in Ningbo and an office in Shanghai. It also opened a new office in Singapore.

At its own stand and among supplier partners, including Sumitomo (SHI) Demag and other injection molding machine suppliers that have private-label supply agreements with Sepro, the French firm displayed 16 robots at Fakuma.

Among the innovations highlighted were linear-style robots with additional axes in their wrist utilizing Staübli technology, and a partnership with Machines Pagès, a specialist in IML systems for 25 years, to create high-speed in-mold labeling (IML) systems for injection molders in the packaging industry. Among the other launches:

5X Visual multi-axis robots, which have three models and are based on Sepro 3-axis Cartesian beam robots but feature a 2-axis Stäubli wrist that has been added to provide additional compact servo rotations

6X Visual robots, which combine a Stäubli 6-axis articulated-arm robot with the Sepro Visual 3 control for a general-purpose automation system in five models for molding machines from 20 to 4000 tons

IML demonstration cell molding 1.2-liter pails with wrap-around labels in a 2-cavity tool on a 4.5-sec cycle. A 250-tonne Demag El Exis used an SE 350 side-entry model controlled by the new Visual 3 dual-core controller, which also controlled the label-handling module supplied by Machines Pagès.

Success range of general-purpose robots was expanded to four units, with three introduced for the first time at Fakuma. Two smaller sizes - Success 7 and Success 11 - and a larger unit, the Success 33, have been added.

Visual 3 robot control, capable of managing six or more high-speed axes of motion inside and outside mold area and with double-CPU architecture where one processor is dedicated to the control pendant's human/machine interface functions and the other to real-time control of robot positioning and movement, including secondary operations.

S3 servo-driven sprue picker for basic robot applications on molding machines from 30 to 200 tons, which promises more speed than pneumatic units, accelerating to 2 m/sec speeds on the vertical axis. The standard Touch 2 control system allows simple part removal in addition to conventional sprue removal.