A cup overflowing with tooling, molding possibilities

When Alexander Dangel set out on his effort to stand out among more than 1,600 exhibitors at Fakuma this year, he knew that business as usual would not be enough. So the managing director and co-owner of mold maker Gollmer Formen GmbH set out to create a product made on-site to grab people's attention.

Commodity products, such as food containers that are commonly produced on the show floor, were out of the question in his mind.

Dangel instead recruited partners from all along the supply line that could work with the mold maker over a period of months to conceptualize, design and ultimately create a unique "crushed cup" he hoped would stand out from the crowd as a giveaway.

Dangel said he took inspiration from other unique designs he saw on the internet to help create his own polypropylene drinking cup injection molded at the Gollmer Formen booth. The cups he saw on the web were made from other materials, and Dangel wanted to showcase the trend while using plastics.

Manfred Gräwe is the project manager at Gollmer Formen, which is based in Kirchheim unter Teck, Germany, about a two-hour drive from Friedrichshafen and Fakuma.

The design of the cup aims to highlight the capabilities of all of the companies involved in the project, Gräwe explained while standing near the production cell as new cups were being molded.

"We have several partners in this project together, which are very famous in the injection molding branch," Gräwe said. "We decided to make this unique design because we need to find the interest of the customers at this fair and design a product that is special."

Dangel agreed.

"I thought we had to create something special. That was the idea. In the past, we didn't have any production system at the booth," he said.

"I think it shows our customers and our potential customers what kind of partners we have," Dangel said during an interview on the Fakuma show floor, just a few feet away from where a Haitian injection molding machine steadily churned out copies of the cup one at a time.

While Dangel calls the product being made at his booth a "crushed cup," he did admit it was hard to describe. "It looks like it's squeezed a little or has a little bit of damage already."

And this, or course, is all by design.

"The challenge was that we wanted to create this look that looks like a damaged cup when you see it. It was not easy for designers," Dangel said.

"The idea was to really get the attention of the guys who visit the fair, or the potential customers, and are attracted by this kind of product. We have so many partners who are experts in their branch, we need to put them together. We can create something special and unique. And we can show what each partner can do in their business," Dangel said.

All of the partners involved will have the opportunity to use the mold for their own promotional events once Fakuma ends, creating multiple marketing opportunities for the cup and the partner firms.

The cups' asymmetrical design utilizes a retractable core created by Wiedemann to allow for the cup to have an uneven shape. And Reichle participated in the project by leading its expertise in laser etching of the mold to create designs on the exterior of the cup.

Other firms involved in the project include Simcon, which provides mold flow analysis software; Kistler, which makes sensors; DMTcreaktiv, a product design firm; Matsui, an auxiliary equipment maker; and Meusburger, a mold parts maker.

"We wanted to have a very sophisticated product, which needs a sophisticated mold concept. That was our target, to get the interest of the fair visitors to show them what we are able to and what kind of partners we have to achieve such a product and show them the skills," Dangel said.

"We want to show what is possible in mold making," Gräwe added.