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At the K 2016 show in Dusseldorf in October, Engel Austria (U.S. office in York, Pa.) will demonstrate a dramatic boost in productivity for injection-blow molding. Using an all-electric Engel e-motion 220 machine (below) and an eight-cavity cube mold built as a proof- of-principle prototype by FOBOHA of Germany, Engel will demonstrate use of a standard injection machine to injection-blow mold large numbers of cavities in very short cycles. Blowing occurs 180° opposite the injection position of the mold. An insulating cover around the blowing station keeps the preforms from cooling off. An easix six-axis robot removes the containers and places them on a conveyor, with no effect on cycle time. Engel claims this concept could be scaled up to 96 cavities without compromising cycle New Robot & Servo Picker at K 2016 INJECTION MOLDING BLOW MOLDING Workcell Router for the 'Smart Factory' Engel Austria (U.S. office in York, Pa.) is expanding its robot line at the upcoming K 2016 show in Dusseldorf in October. One new entry is an addition to the easix line, which currently consists of six-axis articulated- arm robots. For pick-and-place, stacking, and palletizing applications, a new four-axis SCARA version (below left) offers much higher speed at lower cost. Based on Staubli technology, the SCARA robots can be fully integrated into the CC300 injection machine controller. Second, a new servo sprue picker is based on the technology of the e-pic pick-and-place model intro- duced at Fakuma 2014 and shown at NPE2015 (see Dec. '14 Close Up and Feb. '15 Keeping Up), but with one fewer axis. For maximum speed, compactness, and energy efficiency, the new picker combines a linear vertical axis with a vertical swivel arm. Unlike the earlier e-pic, it has no horizontal linear axis; instead it can rotate up to 110° on its pedestal. Like the e-pic, the swivel arm is made of lightweight composite. The new picker can handle payloads up to 2.2 lb and is designed for presses of 60 to 220 metric tons. It uses the same R16 control as the e-pic or can be integrated into the CC300 machine control. The standard control interface is said to be compatible with every injection machine on the market. 717-764-6818 • engelglobal.com/us A major theme of June's 40 th anniversary exhibition of Wittmann Battenfeld in Vienna, Austria, was progress toward the Industry 4.0 "smart factory" of interlinked intelligent devices (see p. 18). Wittmann (U.S. office in Torrington, Conn.) is imple- menting this concept among its own molding machines and auxiliaries under the banner of "Wittmann 4.0." A new mile- stone in that development is the Wittmann 4.0 router, described as the "gateway to the workcell." It's based on open-source tech- nology and acts as a single WAN (wide-area network) address to the outside world and a single point of access between the work cell and MRP and MES computers Its proprietary firewall accepts only Wittmann 4.0 devices. The router automati- cally detects those devices and assigns IP addresses to any Wittmann 4.0 equip- ment in the workcell, saving company IT personnel the need to assign IP addresses to each piece of equipment. This router is also designed for compatibility with the new OPC-UA (Open Platform Communica- tion Unified Architecture) protocol that is being developed by the European plastics machinery association (Euromap) as the industry's future communication standard. 860-496-9603 • wittmann-group.com INJECTION MOLDING Injection-Blow Molding 96 Cavities! time or accuracy—well beyond the range of conventional injection- blow molding. Engel says process consistency beyond the range of standard injection-blow molding can be achieved with its self- regulating iQ weight control and iQ clamp control software. Superior mold-temperature control will be provided by six Engel e-flomo water-manifold units, each having four automatic flow-control circuits. For more Engel K 2016 previews, see p. 14. 717-764-6818 • engelglobal.com/us 54 AUGUST 2016 Plastics Technology PTonline.com With Technology Keeping Up