Boy continues to expand beyond basic machines

Fernthal, Germany — Dr. Boy GmbH has steadfastly remained focused on small-tonnage injection molding machines with a clamping force maxing out at 100 metric tons — but these are anything but simple, basic machines.

Boy has added automation and technology over the years. Maybe some customers still do shoot-and-ship molding (after all, Boy presses are so small you can run one in your garage). But like all Western machinery manufacturers, Boy faces lower-priced competition from China — and executives have responded with presses packed with customized automation, tailored for specific molding jobs.

Boy began a major push into automation within the last 10 years, continually adding features like six-axis articulating robots, more automated part inspection, micromolding and two-component molding. Many of the small parts get packaged right at the press.

“We learned this also from our customers,” said Alfred Schiffer, Boy's managing partner. “We followed our customers and they asked for [more automation]. They reduce their technical personnel, because of the availability, not because they want to.” And, Schiffer said, customers said they would look to competitors unless Boy added more automation.

Chinese companies can significantly undercut the prices of German and U.S. machinery manufacturers — although Schiffer said the Chinese have not focused much on small-tonnage machines for export.

The low-priced competition makes it even more important to work closely with customers, earlier, he said.

“We want to be more and more the one who solved the problem,” Schiffer said. “And this is difficult because the machine that molds the part and just drops it into the box, this is becoming more and more difficult for us to reach the necessary selling price.”

Schiffer gave one example: A work cell of two Boy injection molding machines equipped with two six-axis robots. One machine produced a nylon ring, which was plasma treated in a station between the two presses. That ring was placed in the second machine, which overmolded a two-component liquid silicone rubber component.

Plastics News sat down at Boy's factory in small-town Fernthal with Alfred Schiffer and his sister, Helga Schiffer, the chairman of Boy Machines Inc., the company's U.S. operation in Exton, Pa., which is run as an independent entity, and Wolfgang Schmidt, export manager. They discussed Boy's past, and the future of the company's small-tonnage injection molding presses — a growing stable of technology that includes insert molding, LSR, multicomponent molding, micromolding, powder injection molding and elastomer molding.

LSR is a growing market, Alfred Schiffer said. “In the future, LSR will become more of a share of the cake. Especially in the technical area. It will be strong and growing in the medical area,” he said.

Boy also has tapped into a desire by some molders to run many smaller machines with single-cavity molds instead of big presses with expensive multicavity molds — even in packaging, where one major U.S. Boy customer, Double H Plastics Inc., has honed that to a fine art for its lids. Rather than shutting off one of 96 cavities — or turning off the entire large press for maintenance or repairs — you can just take one single-cavity machine off line and deal with it.

Schmidt said another reason to use small-tonnage presses is when you need to mold the same product with different colors or designs, which is hard to do in a multicavity mold.

K 2016 was a typical Boy stand in the modern era. Two robots were working cooperation on a Boy 35 VV — including a collaborative robot serving of all things German, a beer! The injection press made transparent glasses, which were then removed from the mold by a six-axis robot. On request from the show visitor, the glasses were individually labeled with a name and filled with beer. Then a collaborative robot handed the filled glass directly to the trade fair visitor.

“This is our topic for Industry 4.0, where you can do beer on demand,” Schmidt joked.

Also at K, Boy reprised its 3-D printed mold inserts, first shown at the Fakuma show last year. And the tool changing system for accommodating the 3-D printed mold inserts, which was previously only used on the Boy XS, is now also available for the larger Boy 25 E and Boy 35 E.

Another show highlight was micromolding on a Boy XS of parts with a shot weight of just 0.08 grams using a screw diameter of just 8 millimeters. The parts are for a micro rotary engine.

Boy also showed multi-component molding, the injection blow molding process and medical technology. Visitors also could help to manufacture their own torque wrench.

The exhibit at K 2016 is a far cry from the early days of Dr. Boy.

Max Schiffer co-founded Boy in 1968, when the company began selling machines commercially. But the development of the small injection molding came several years before, as he wanted a better machine to mold toothbrushes, the family business.

“My father was looking for the perfect machine to produce plastic products and he couldn't find it, so he developed one for his own use,” Helga Schiffer said.

First he went to the major European machinery manufacturers. And they weren't interested in the under 100-ton machine market, she said, adding: “It wasn't always his intention to develop a machine.”

By the late 1960s, Boy exhibited its first machinery at the Germany's Hannover Fair.

Interest and demand for more Boy presses swamped Max Schiffer and his fledgling company. Other companies wanted small machines, too.

“I think at that time they were able to sell during the exhibition, the whole production capacity for one year,” Schmidt said.

Helga Schiffer helped out in the booth. “I remember one evening my father, he lost his voice. He said, ‘Oh what did we start? Now we have to go home and produce!' This is the reason I still remember that this was overwhelming,” she said.

Then came tragedy. Max Schiffer died in a major German train accident in Bavaria in 1971 — just three years after the machinery company began. His son Carl Schiffer, who had just graduated from the university with a degree in business administration, assumed the top position.

Helga Schiffer recalled: “We were all very young at that time. The company just started. It was a rough time, so Carl started very early to take over responsibilities.”

She said her father, like Carl, was a business person, not an engineer. But he hired good people who did the detail work.

“[Max Schiffer] was just 49 when he died. So I wonder what he would have invented if he would not have lost his life,” Helga Schiffer said.

Boy has continued to grow as a family owned German company — the factory has turned out about 40,000 injection molding machines. Today Boy employs 165 people in Fernthal.

Max Schiffer pioneered a moving assembly line for building injection molding machines. Since Boy had a single model, the underground belt-type system was designed to support fixed production. Flexibility — a hallmark of Boy's assembly line today — wasn't needed when the company was young.

As Boy's product lines grew more diverse, the company went to a craft-assembly practice, where a team of people worked on each press, as the machine sat in the same place. Then in 2007, Boy went back to the future — an assembly line — but with some major, modern, improvements.

Now, in the flexible-flow system, every machine that is connected to the line can be disconnected — under management's decision for example, to remove a machine from the line and finish manually to meet a quick delivery demand.

 Different sizes and models of Boy presses can come down the line, one after the other. Employees work in small teams assigned to specific tasks along the assembly line, such as the injection unit, the clamping unit, pre-assembling the electrical cabinet and putting in the wiring. The teams have dedicated tools, for example, torque wrenches preset for their function.

Each machine can be raised and lowered, an ergonomic plus that makes it easier to do the work at each station and improves quality in the factory, which is bright and well lit.

Every step is fully documented, so you can see who did which function, and get a full inventory of components. If a problem is found with a component, Boy can go back into its large warehouse and pull the parts.

Boy buys its machined parts from outside suppliers, made to Boy's designs and specifications. Boy builds its own controller cabinets in house. By issuing reference numbers on bundles of cables, the company gains traceability and cuts down on errors.

All manufacturing companies pledge allegiance to high quality, it's Management 101. And of course Boy is no different. But the leaders and employees at Boy have an even bigger incentive: Smaller presses that are priced, say at $100,000 or less have a smaller amount of margin for error, less “wiggle room” for correcting mistakes in the field, than does a company selling a 2,000-ton press.

“Avoiding mistakes is better than finding mistakes,” Schmidt said. “The message is that we have to do our upmost to deliver the machines without any defects, trouble or difficulties.”

Each press goes through a final inspection and run-off station. Electrical hookups mirror the power requirements of each country where Boy ships presses.

“All the machines are not only very extensively tested, they are also calibrated under the conditions where the equipment will be installed. Not calibrated under German conditions, where you can get different figures,” Schmidt said.

Boy presses already don't take up much floor space. But the company's two-platen design makes them 30 percent smaller than a comparable three-platen press.

And the Schiffers use cast iron for the key parts of the machine. Alfred Schiffer said cast iron adds expense, but is more shock-absorbent than traditional steel, and lasts longer. The cylinder and casting also are easy to take apart to make changes or do maintenance, he said.

Cast iron would not be economical for larger-tonnage machines, but the material gives the small-press maker an advantage.

The long-lasting presses hold an emotional attachment to their owners, many of whom are still running their first Boy. Schmidt said some farmers installed Boy presses in converted stables or garages in the 1970s, the German government paid small farmers to scale back their farms.

“So it was easy to plug and play such a system,” he said. Even in a barn.