Teletronics: Higher productivity per square metre of production space
At the Teletronics section of the Engel stand, a new tie-bar-less and all-electric Engel e‑motion 50 TL will produce 15-pin plug housings from fibreglass-reinforced PBT/ASA using a two-cavity mould. "The trend towards ever higher productivity per square metre of factory space is continuing," emphasises Heinz Rasinger, Vice President of Engel's Teletronics business unit. "The electronics industry also has extremely high demands as regards precision." The 15 contact pins in the finished connector, for example, are very close together, and the moulded grid structure is equally fine with wall thicknesses and edge lengths in the region of micrometres. In this market segment, all-electric machines are the standard. To offer highly compact manufacturing cells, Engel combines all-electric drive technology with a tie-bar-less clamping unit in its Engel e-motion TL small machine range.Having unveiled the Engel e-motion TL with an initial clamping force of 30 tons at K 2013, Engel will be upgrading the new series to include a 50-ton version at Fakuma 2014. As with the smaller variant, the new Engel e-motion 50 TL features a one-piece machine frame that makes the injection moulding machine lighter and more compact than comparable all-electric machines of other types. The design also guarantees very high platen parallelism and even distribution of clamping force. "The small, all-electric Engel e-motion TL machines are concrete proof that even after a quarter of a century, the concept of tie-bar-less injection moulding machines has room for innovation," says Heinz Rasinger. "We believe there is a great deal of potential for tie-bar-less injection moulding machines in the electronics industry." Many electronic components such as plug housings are parts with complex, three dimensional structures requiring bulky moulds with slide units and core-pulls but relatively low clamping force because of the somewhat small part surfaces projected. In many applications, the fact that the mould mounting platens on a tie-bar-less machine can be used up to the edges means that a smaller machine can be used than the mould size would normally dictate – and this drives up productivity per square metre of factory space.
