Michael Wittmann: ‘Right now, the only way is up'

Machinery sales barely faltered throughout the difficult period of the coronavirus crisis, according to Michael Wittmann.

"We felt the impact of the pandemic particularly in the second half of last year, but at the same time, it created new opportunities. Not only did we learn to cope in a difficult situation, but we saw a truly dramatic increase in slower moving segments, such as garden furniture. People had to stay at home and therefore started doing more around the house. In the end, in terms of business figures the impact has been small," said Wittmann, CEO of Vienna, Austria-based Wittmann Group.

Speaking at the company's Fakuma 2021 press event on Oct. 7, he said the group was on track to record between 360 million ($417 million) and 380 million euros ($440 million) in sales this year — up 21 percent from the previous year. However, the actual figure will be largely determined by the availability of materials and components, he added.

"Given a normal parts situation, we could be looking at well above 400 million euros. But it depends on how that situation develops and what happens with the materials shortages the market is experiencing right now."

One thing is certain: At the moment, all the markets, in all regions, are moving in a single direction, and that direction is up. Order levels broke all records for the group in the first quarter of 2021 and have remained high throughout the year, even in the months of August and September. As a result, the company will be entering 2022 with a healthy backlog that will cushion the effects of the slowdown that must, inevitably, come.

"Of course, the shortage situation will cause a cooling off to normal, or even less than normal levels," Wittmann said. "But due to this backlog, we will not feel an effect before the first quarter or even the middle of 2022."

The machinery maker, which has a workforce of 2,240, has continued to invest over the past year, both in the expansion of existing production capacity and in the construction of new facilities. Among others, the group is adding a third facility in Dongguan, China, to strengthen the existing sales and service activities in Southern China; the subsidiary in Romania moved into new headquarters in Bucharest, while a second facility is under construction in Oradea; and Wittmann Battenfeld Bulgaria, which had moved to new premises in Plovdiv, the second-largest town in the country, started construction on new office space, a showroom and warehouse.

Extensive renovations are also being carried out on the two production facilities in Vienna. At the production area in Kottingbrunn, also in Austria, some 3,000 square meters of additional space is being added, which will house a fully automatic pallet racking system with around 1,500 pallet bays, a separate storage and order picking area, a new electrical workshop and an assembly area for vertical and large machines. Construction commenced in May, with completion planned in the fourth quarter of 2022.

This year at Fakuma, the Wittmann Group has taken a hybrid approach to the show, with presentations live on-site in Friedrichshafen, combined with livestreams to allow visitors to log in via Wittmann Interactive to the technical labs in Kottingbrunn, Meinerzhagen and Nuremberg for information about further selected exhibits.

The main focus at Fakuma is on showing how the company can provide competitive advantages for customers in three main areas, said Wittmann.

"In the first place, we concentrate on energy efficiency when it comes to any kind of new development. Any new product that we bring into the market has to be more energy-efficient than the previous models," he said.

Second is the development of technologies, particularly from a software standpoint, for processing post-industrial and post-consumer regrind, while the third focus is Industry 4.0 — "or you might know it under the name Wittmann 4.0," he added.

With three injection molding machines running at the booth in Hall B1, Wittmann Battenfeld is presenting a comprehensive overview of what it has to offer in all three areas.

A major highlight is the roll-out of the new Wittmann Battenfeld SmartPlus servo-hydraulic machine, complete with the new B8X control system with system components developed in-house. It also features the KERS energy recovery technology originally developed for the EcoPower. While based on the concept of the company's high-end SmartPower series, the SmartPlus is primarily geared to less complex, more standard applications for which far fewer equipment configurations are needed.

"The 'Plus' stands for the added value this new machine series has to offer for these types of applications," said Rainer Weingraber, managing director of Wittmann Battenfeld GmbH.

With the industry's increasing use of recycled materials in mind, this machine is also offered with the HiQ Flow application software, a program developed to offset the viscosity fluctuations often seen when processing regrind. The SmartPlus is currently undergoing practical tests at selected customers. From the fourth quarter of 2021 onward, the machine is expected to be available in a first series with clamping forces ranging from 60-180 tonnes.

The SmartPlus 180/750 is molding a PP hubcap for lawn mowers from PP, using a mold supplied by Uralan, Germany. The part will be produced from a mixture of virgin material with regrind and HiQ Flow software will be used to compensate the effects of temperature and batch fluctuations on the viscosity of the material. The automation system, using a Primus 26T robot from Wittmann is implemented via an Easy Cell, which requires no safety gate and therefore takes up only a minimal amount of space beside the injection molding machine.

The machine is also equipped with another new feature: the CMS-Light condition monitoring system, a simplified version of the CMS system that is used on the large-sized Macro Power machine, which has now been developed for the smaller machines. This "Health Factor" indicates the health status of the main hydraulic units, taking into account a multitude of internal process parameters in real time, as well as drawing on historical trend values.

The company in now focusing on expanding this to include developments focused on the health status of electrically driven units, said Weingraber.

An all-electric EcoPower 55/350, equipped with the software packages HiQ Flow, HiQ Melt for material quality monitoring and HiQ Metering for active closing of the check valve is molding a hose clamp for a medical application in an eight-cavity mold supplied by WILAmed GmbH. As well, a multicomponent LSR application is shown on a MicroPower 15/10H/10H Combimould with two injection units in horizontal configuration and a rotary disc. A support ring with a silicone membrane made of PC and LSR will be molded in a tool constructed in cooperation with Nexus.

Two new robots are also being launched at the show: the newest Sonic model, the Sonic 108, having a payload of 2 kg and featuring a fixed demolding axis, which been optimized for high-speed parts removal in packaging and pick-and-place applications, and an upgraded version of the WX153 robot.

The company is also showcasing two new rotational axes its new A-C servo axis for small robots (W918-W922) that is capable of handling grippers weighing up to 10 kg. A WX138 fitted with the A-C servo axis is putting the new axis through its paces at the booth. Also, the new A-B-C servo axis for the WX medium-sized robots (WX142-WX153) is being demonstrated on a WX153 — fitted with the new axis, it can handle grippers weighing over 20 kg, even when using three additional axes.

A very recent project — and, said Weingraber, "a quite amazing application" — demonstrates how far the technology of functionalization in decorated surfaces has progressed in recent years. Together with partners Syntech Plastics and Leonhard Kurz, Wittmann Battenfeld has developed a one-step scalable IMD/IML manufacturing concept to produce a close-to-series, fully functional conceptual component for an automotive roof liner element using a SmartPower 300 machine, a W846 robot and auxiliary components from WIttmann Battenfeld, and an IMD unit supplied by Kurz. The functional sensor foil is positioned on the fixed mold half, the carrier foil with the single image décor is formed in the cavity of the moving mold half, and the plastic material is injected, in this case PMMA. The production cell, which is at the Wittmann Battenfeld facility in Nuremberg, can be viewed by visitors on demonstrators at the Wittmann booth and at that of Leonhard Kurz.

In a glimpse of what the company sees as the "user interface of the future," visitors to the booth can view — via Wittmann Interactive — the preliminary results of an ongoing research project that is studying options for intuitive interaction with injection molding machines and parts removal robots. These developments are centered on the use of voice recognition and mixed reality technology with the help of a Microsoft Hololens 2. Operators control the process using voice commands, such as "machine, start injection," "robot, go to parts deposit position" or "robot, switch on vacuum." These are analyzed by a processing unit installed inside the production cell.

"Although there are definitely a couple more years of development needed, the demonstration clearly shows the potential behind the technology," Wittmann said.

"Like everything else that goes in the direction of artificial intelligence, there is a learning phase, which we're going through. I would say that in the next couple of years, as using voice recognition becomes more natural, it will certainly become a part of the operation of a molding machine."

The production cell equipped with HoloVoice consists of a SmartPower 120 equipped with a B8 control system and a W918 robot fitted with R9 control software.