Reduced unit costs and enhanced precision

Pipe system specialist Peštan is focusing in future on the production of sound insulated plastic pipes and fittings. They support very quiet building drainage at less than 12 decibels. A great deal of know-how goes into the products: from the material to the geometry of the fittings – the focus is on sound insulation. Tie-bar-less ENGEL victory machines meet the increasing precision requirements while at the same time reducing unit costs.  

Mold set-up is an essential factor in pipe fitting production:

• Pipe fitting molds cannot do without core-pulls. These often extend laterally beyond the mold itself.

• Pipe fitting molds are extremely large and complex compared to the part surface to be created.

• Tie-bar-less injection molding machines are predetermined for this task: the molds can be pushed into the barrier-free mold area in one piece and mounted directly from the side. ENGEL machines have helped us cut the set-up times by half and achieve utilization times of over 90 percent. That's a very high value that directly affects the unit cost.

The significantly smaller machines are another efficiency factor. Since the core-pulls cannot always extend between the tie-bars, many pipe fitting molds run on very large machines that offer more clamping force than the molding process requires. This is different with tie-bar-less machines. Only the cavities have to be in the area of the mold mounting platens. However, the mold edge and the mechanism can extend beyond the platens. In this way, large molds can be mounted on small injection molding machines. This requires less energy and most importantly less space. The basis of comparison at Peštan for a 300-ton tie-bar-less machine is a 800 ton toggle-lever machine.

Other efficiency factors in the production of fittings include very high repeatability, which enables faster production, and reduced raw material usage thanks to plasticizing consistency. It has proved possible to reduce the unit costs thanks to these advantages.