CHICAGO (July 5, 11:50 a.m. EDT) — Some companies change the colors of their injection presses routinely, an easy way to give them a fresh new look. And then there´s Dr. Boy GmbH.
At NPE 2000, Boy showed presses with the first color change since 1968, when Max Schiffer co-founded the company in Germany. In the more than three decades since then, the company has produced more than 30,000 small-tonnage presses. Every one has sported Boy´s trademark blue and yellow colors.
Back when his father started Boy, Carl Schiffer literally was a boy, at 15 years old. Carl Schiffer, now company chairman, said the color change "was a big issue" for company executives.
"We realized we cannot change colors like everybody else changes colors, because we were always highly identified with our colors," Schiffer said, as a press with the new color rotated slowly at the NPE booth of Boy Machines Inc. of Exton, Pa.
The machine base now sports a lighter-aqua color instead of blue. The injection unit is now a metallic aluminum color. The safety gate is a lighter shade of yellow. Boy officials say the presses sport a more contemporary look.
Schiffer recalled that, 32 years ago, Boy broke new ground with yellow and blue. At the time, machinery usually was painted industrial colors of green or gray.
Dr. Boy began as an injection molding company, producing toothbrushes. Max Schiffer found that small presses with single-cavity molds worked better than larger machines running multicavity molds.
The company´s presses, with clamping forces of 14-88 tons, are built at a highly automated factory in Fernthal, Germany.
Boy Machines also made news in vertical-clamp machines at NPE 2000, by announcing a partnership with Panzer Tool Works Inc. of Elk Grove Village, Ill. Boy displayed a 24-ton insert molding machine with a Panzer-built Rotoslide system. The rotary table moves molds up and down and in and out of the molding area, giving the Boy machines new levels of automation.
On the Rotoslide, a servo-electric motor drives a ball screw, which then moves a slide guided by ball bearings.