FRIEDRICHSHAFEN, GERMANY — Mold makers may be used to seeing cores and pins on the exhibition stand of a supplier — but not augmented reality that looks like it comes from a science fiction movie.
Hasco Hasenclever GmbH has a treat for visitors to its Fakuma 2014 stand in Friedrichshafen, where it is showing mold parts in a way never done before.
Holding a tablet close to a 2-D drawing of a mold activates an augmented reality app, which makes a 3-D image of the mold spring into life. Move the tablet around the drawing and the visitor sees a 3-D view of the mold. Tap on one part and up comes more information about that mold feature.
Magic Lens is an augmented reality communication tool that Hasco launched at Fakuma following development by Austrian software company Imagination Computer Services GmbH.
Magic Lens will be used primarily for communication at trade shows, but Hasco has also created a smartphone app for its customers to use any time, said Dirk Paulmann, executive vice president of sales and business development at Hasco, based in Lüdenscheid, Germany. The app has functions for material selection, the conversion of hardness values, DIN/ISO tolerances for shafts and holes and a tool for the layout and dimensioning of locking cylinders.
Hasco's surprising use of digital tech is only one part of an extensive brand relaunch that aims to communicate the group's focus on quality products and support for customers.
“This shows that we are not just innovative on products, but also on how we communicate,” Paulmann said.
In August, Hasco's hot runner division concentrated its production capacities at the company's Guntramsdorf site near Vienna, Austria, having previously split work with its Lüdenscheid facility.
“The mold base division makes 85 percent of our [sales] and this core activity will stay in the Lüdenscheid headquarters,” said Paulmann. “But in hot runners, if nozzle production is in one place and manifold production is in another, it doesn't make sense.”
Hasco moved production to a single location to help optimize manufacturing workflow. It assembles the hot runner systems directly after they have been machined in the milling centers. Then the hot runner nozzles are fitted to the systems before they are packed and sent to the customers.
The company says the tightly scheduled process allows fast delivery times. The hot runner division can build systems with a simple manifold geometry and up to four nozzles in just five working days.
The company's headquarters in Lüdenscheid is its center for application technology competence, staffed by technicians with many years experience of hot runners from the automotive, electronics, white goods, packaging and medical technology markets.
At Fakuma, Hasco's mold base division is promoting innovations in temperature control, which it says enable the cost-efficient manufacture of injection moldings. Its work on risers for mold units has led to new developments, including wider risers with suitably adapted ejector packages that have been specifically designed to avoid deflection in cavity plates.
The company's new Z160 and Z161 series thread adapters replace the short fixing thread in the ejector base plate with a long inside thread and ensure reliable transmission of the ejection force.
The adapters are protected against rotation by a special collar geometry, and can be mounted without protruding beyond the ejector plate. The size range is coordinated with the thread sizes of the Z02 series ejector rods.
Other new products include: Z1814 series spacers for the simple adjustment of the heel block on mold slide units; A4300 permanent magnets to secure mold inserts; Z9642 diverting element for cooling circuits, which has a very low height for use in thin plates; and Z8021 adaptor for coupling different diameter cooling systems between the mold and temperature control unit.
Hasco's hot runner division is launching the Z3281 multimodule, which can control individual gates using two to six nozzles in one unit. The TechniShot nozzles screw into the single-part distributor and ensure leak-free operation.
The nozzle heating units can be individually controlled to give a uniform temperature profile over the entire flow path, from the entry of the melt through to the nozzle gates. The Multimodule is also suitable for use with engineering plastics that have a narrow processing window.