Stork races to repair press damaged en route to NPE

Officials of Stork IMM BV will never forget their first-ever NPE — the Dutch company's injection press fell off a truck on the way to Orange County Convention Center, and they had to work fast to get it ready for the show.

The press doesn't look quite like a typical shiny new machine. But the Dutch company is making the most of the accident, touting the durability of its machine that's built tough to make big pails on a fast cycle time.

On Monday, March 16, the driver of a truck delivering Stork's press to NPE rounded a curve too fast and tipped over on the Central Florida Parkway, not far from the show hall in Orlando, Fla. NPE was scheduled to start just a week later, on March 23.

Contained in a shipping container, the Stork injection press, with 485 tons of clamping force, was damaged.

“The machine tumbled over,” said Hans Wentzel, product manager.

Stork manufactured the injection press at its headquarters plant in Hengelo, the Netherlands, and shipped it across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States.

“The whole trip goes well, and just in the last mile….” Wentzel said.

Ronald Dekker, a Stork engineer who was in charge of setting up the NPE press — the only machine at Stork's booth — got the phone call about 9 a.m. that morning. He went to the site. The truck was placed upright, and a crew used to crane to move the damaged press to another truck, then transported it to a salvage area.

Then it took a few days until insurance companies agreed to unload the container and assess the machine, Stork officials said. That was on March 20. The outer guarding was severely damaged. Measurements showed the base fame was out of alignment. The controller was shattered. The rear computer cabinet and lubricating system were bent and distorted. Hydraulic fluid was leaking out. And the mold — a precision two-cavity mold to turn out half-gallon pails, which had been mounted on the machine — broke loose.

“If you consider the weight, and it falls over. Just because of the inertia, everything was out of center,” Wentzel said.

Stork had just one day to the get the mid-sized press to its NPE 2015 booth, which it is sharing with Rollepaal Inc., a sister company that makes extruders.

Normally, Dekker sets up the show machines by himself. He had help from the Rollepaal people, like service engineer Hank Kosters. Fellow press makers from Sumitomo Demag, Engel and Husky lent a hand, including loaning special tools to the Stork crew.

“Before the show starts, everybody wants to help you,” Wentzel said. “When you have problems like this, your competitors are not competitors.”

Wentzel and Stork electrician Luc Pennings flew over from Holland.

“So we had to decide, what are we going to do? Because we don't want to let us down that easily. But it seemed almost impossible,” Wentzel said.

So just three days before NPE 2015 was set to begin, they decided to do it — to get the machine back into running order. They set up the press on the show floor and tore off the crushed machine guarding.

“And we hoped that the heart of the machine — the support, the tie bars, the platens — that these were still a bit OK,” Wentzel said.

Stork employees toiled long hours to square up the machine components and get the mold in order.

The machine molded its first pails at 9:30 a.m. on March 21, the Saturday before NPE 2015 — after employees began working on it at 2 a.m., linked via the Internet to Holland. The parts came out looking good. Then the Stork technicians began working to link a Sepro robot to the process.

Talk about a time-crush! Stork's maiden voyage may have set a record for fast action.

“We only have a few days' time,” Wentzel said. “[Under normal circumstances] you just have a week to set everything up. If everything goes fine it's no problem. But if you have a setback, then it's a race against the clock.”

Since all the typical machine guarding was damaged beyond repair, Stork officials worked with the NPE 2015 general contractor, Freeman Co., to obtain the type of guarding that's typically used around robots and automation. At NPE 2015, that guarding will be placed around the Stork injection press.

Wentzel plans to put photos on the guarding, showing what the press is supposed to look like, and telling the story of the mishap on the way to the show.

After NPE 2015 ends, Stork will ship the machine back to its Netherlands headquarters, install proper machine guarding on it, then send it on to another trade show in Poland.

As the white pails came out of the press in Orlando Saturday morning, Wentzel explained how the mold had to be adjusted to line up perfection, to hold the thin-wall parts.

“That's a great moment for us,” Wentzel declared, as Dekker reached down and grabbed the still-warm pails and showed them to his colleagues.

Now the Stork press is famous, and Wentzel said the saga shows that Stork builds robust injection molding machines with strong frames. “You build machines that should endure,” he said, chuckling.

As bad as the experience has been, he said that message should help Stork as it targets the North American market for its fast-cycling, large machines. Stork will beef up its presence here, working out of Rollepaal's U.S. operation in Tampa, Fla.

Wentzel was philosophical, as he took a break at Stork's NPE booth.

“You can do two things when something happens like this. You can put a sign there — ‘We're not here, sorry.'

“But you know, that's not us. We go for it. So now we'll put a sign up, ‘We always go the extra mile!' But we do that,” he said. “Our customers are mainly in the packaging industry. So output is very important. And that's not only a matter of cycle time of the machine. It's the reliability of the machine, but also the reliability of your service. So you have to show that you're committed to always find the solution.”

Even if the machine falls off a truck.