5,700 customers from 53 nations came to the Arburg Anniversary Days at the "Think Tank" in Lossburg, Germany, from 8 to 11 March 2023. At the event, which is called Technology Days in other years, everything that makes plastic hearts beat faster was to be found. The exhibition area covered the entire company: In addition to more than 50 exhibits and innovative applications, Arburg impressed with its combined expertise on important topics such as sustainability, digitalisation, energy efficiency and automation.
The enthusiastic guests were able to experience live and in colour what the family-owned company with its 100-year history is all about at the exhibits in the Customer Center, in the Efficiency Arena, in the training and service areas, in the Automation Arena, as well as during tours of the company and specialist lectures: Sustainable action, innovative ideas, forward thinking and combined expertise in resource-saving and production-efficient plastic parts manufacturing.
Highlight: Milestone machine with new technology
A hybrid Allrounder 470 H against a golden background attracted a great deal of interest in the Customer Center. The milestone machine sets the stage for a new machine technology from Arburg – it saves energy, conserves resources, is production-efficient, user-friendly and reliable all at the same time. The technical features include a new oil management concept, flow splitting for simultaneous movements of hydraulic secondary axes and the extended use of the Arburg servo hydraulic system. With the "Comfort", "Premium" and "Ultimate" performance variants, various injection units and a wide range of options, the new Allrounder 470 H machines can be precisely adapted to specific customer requirements.
Milestone machine: The hybrid Allrounder 470 H sets the stage for a new machine technology that saves energy, conserves resources, is production-efficient, user-friendly and reliable.
Live: Plastic processing you can touch
In total, over 50 exhibits produced live injection-moulded and 3D-printed components at the Anniversary Days. Numerous new products, exciting applications and innovative processes were on show. Around every second machine processed alternative plastics or recyclates. For example, an Allrounder 470 S produced dosing spoons from corn starch that dissolve in water and are compostable, while an Allrounder 320 C Golden Edition processed post-consumer recyclate obtained from used refrigerators and returned to the cycle. An invisible "tracer" was also compounded into the material, through which each part could be identified in a forgery-proof manner. In a particularly resource-saving application for the packaging industry, special emphasis was placed on a material-saving component design and energy efficiency: An Allrounder 720 A "Ultimate" produced four thin-walled IML round cups with a wall thickness of only 0.37 millimetres in a cycle time of 3.95 seconds. Combining the new all-electric packaging machine with the injection compression moulding process improves the energy footprint by 20 percent while significantly reducing the component weight from 13 to 10.8 grams.
5,700 customers from 53 nations came to the Arburg Anniversary Days at the "think tank" in Lossburg, from 8 to 11 March 2023. The first port of call was the Customer Center (picture 187907) with numerous exhibits and exciting applications in injection moulding and 3D printing.
Other application highlights included, for example, the fully automated injection stretch blow moulding of vaccine containers, the production of ready-to-use Luer Lock connectors for the pharmaceutical industry and the production of tyre levers that can be traced via an "invisible fingerprint".
Freeformer exhibits and 3D printers from innovatiQ presented the entire range for industrial additive manufacturing. One highlight was the new Freeformer 750-3X with a build chamber around 2.5 times larger and with a higher construction speed compared to the Freeformer 300-3X – with the same external dimensions. The process is also faster and more economical. Also on display were Freeformers in high-temperature and soft versions for processing plastic granules, as well as the TiQ and LiQ series, which 3D print on the basis of filaments and liquid silicone.
