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advantage in—and therefore does not ofer—all-electrics. 2. SPRUE PICKERS GO SERVO Servo-powered sprue pickers were a hot button at Fakuma, promising more speed and precision than pneumatics, plus lower energy consumption. • Wittmann Battenfeld introduced the WS80 servo picker with a rotary axis and two linear axes. It's designed to operate within the machine guards. • KraussMafei showed of its new SPX10 servo picker, also with a rotary axis and telescoping vertical arm. It operates within the machine envelope. • Engel introduced the servo-driven e-pic, which is distinctive for its jointed vertical arm and an additional tele- scoping action. • While not new, Arburg showed its two- year-old swiveling servo picker. • Sepro (U.S. ofce in Pittsburgh; seproamerica.com) showed its S3 swiveling servo picker, which also appeared at Fakuma 2013 and K 2013. • Boy operated its year-old swiveling sprue picker—a pneumatic model. 3. MOLD COOLING GETS MORE ATTENTION Injection machine suppliers are now addressing mold cooling as a process vari- able that has received far less attention than other sources of quality and productivity fuctuations. • Engel introduced the e-fomo water manifold that automatically monitors water pressure and temperature and adjusts water-fow valves to compensate for flter clogging and system pressure variations. • Wittmann Battenfeld showed its new ultrasonic fow monitor for Tempro plus D series TCUs that now operates at higher temperatures (160-180 C) and measures fow rates down to 0.5 liter/ min with ± 5% accu- racy. Also new is the Flowcon plus water regulator, which con- trols either tempera- ture or fow rate for each individual water circuit. It's aimed particularly at water up to 100 C and measures fow in a noncontact manner from 1 to 15 l/min. Wittmann says more than half of its mold-temperature controllers are now sold with a fow-regula- tion device. • KraussMafei operated an all-electric AX machine with a fow-monitoring system integrated into the MC6 machine controller to document the mold heat balancing for quality records. • ONI Temperiertechnik Rhytemper GmbH of Germany (oni-rhytemper.de) showed of its new-generation Rhytemper FlowWatch water-distribution/fow controller with Electronic fow monitoring and control in mold-cooling circuits looks like a new trend. Shown here: Engel's new e-fomo (left) and Wittmann Battenfeld's new ultrasonic fow monitor (center) and Flowcon plus (right). Most new servo sprue pickers, like Wittmann Battenfeld's WS80 (above) feature a rotary arm. Engel's new e-pic, however (below), has a traversing arm with a jointed vertical motion and additional telescoping action. Servo sprue pickers have become a major new category, offering greater speed and precision. 12 DECEMBER 2014 Plastics Technology PTonline.com FA K U M A 2 0 1 5 Close -Up On Technolog y