Rico Group has its headquarters in Thalheim, Austria, where it operates as Rico Elastomere Projecting GmbH in mold making, automation and molding of both liquid silicone rubber and high-temperature vulcanized (HTV) silicone rubber parts.
Although founded as a mold maker with its own patented cold runner system, Rico has been also molding parts since 2012. The Thalheim molding shop has Arburg machines, while the technical department has both Arburg and Engel presses.
The machines are supplied with LSR by mixing and dosing units from Reinhardt-Technik and 2KM.
Presses in the technical department try out molds in pilot series. This enables the molding shop machines to focus on serial production, where Rico also encourages companies "to extend their workbenches" by outsourcing some or all of their production to Rico.
Markus Landl, head of international business development at Rico Group, said the development of applications and markets has been an exciting history in LSR's relatively short 40 years lifetime. Multishot molding has been developed just within the past 25 years, and "it is certainly exciting to see, when looking back, how this concept has developed, both in terms of materials and tooling, especially in the way it combines a cross-linking material with thermoplastics."
