Reflecting its growth in medical molding, Westec Plastics Corp. has purchased three new Arburg injection presses that round out a string of investments totaling $3 million in equipment and upgrades at its Livermore, Calif., plant.
Two machines arrived in November and one in December. The company already had bought five new Arburgs in 2020 and now has a total of 28 presses, with clamping forces of 28-610 tons.
Three of the newer machines are two-shot models coupled with Arburg Multilift Cartesian robots. Westec's other purchases included three 110-ton injection presses, one 170-ton and one 28-ton. The company also added three collaborative robots, or cobots, for assembly and secondary operations support.
"We built a Class 7 secondary operations clean room and extended our Class 8 hard-walled molding clean room," Westec President Tammy Barras said via email March 15. "We also built a very large — 20-foot-tall — ISO Class 8 molding clean room to enclose our two-shot molding machines."
The company created a larger production area by adding 9,200 square feet to the plant.
"We also purchased two mobile clean rooms … [and] added a Keyence IM-7030T measurement system" for quality control, she said.