Record orders for Heller

Heller reports, all things considered, that 2018 was a good year for the group: in the fiscal year, the company generated a sales volume of €558.3m, slightly below the previous year’s level; however, with a volume of nearly €700m, order intake reached a new high.

Orders were booked worth €695.2m, corresponding to a rise of €82.3m or 13.4%. With a total of €546m, the current order volume has also reached a high. The number of employees increased moderately from 2440 in 2017 to 2590 in 2018, while equity ratio increased to just under 35%.
For further information www.heller.biz

Strip-feeding lines with high-performance levellers

In the automotive industry, lightweight construction is in greater demand than ever before.

However, car seats and their fastening elements must withstand the enormous forces exerted on vehicles involved in accidents. High-strength materials are used to ensure high resilience, but with a lower weight.
The machines of numerous automotive suppliers used up to now are often not designed for processing these materials. As a result, automotive supplier Adient has taken appropriate upgrade measures: the press lines at its Solingen works were recently extended with the addition of three strip-feeding lines featuring high-performance levellers from Schnutz GmbH. The new machines enable feeding and easy processing of the special materials with optimum flatness being achieved.
“Prior to awarding the contracts to Schnutz, Adient carried out extensive tests at various suppliers,” says Dr Lutz-Stefan Henrich, managing director of Schnutz GmbH. “The aim was to ascertain whether the machines were suitable for the complex and multi-stage forming of high-strength steel.”
At the technical centre in Siegen, Germany, Schnutz convinced the automotive supplier of the quality of its machines in joint levelling tests. For this reason, Adient decided to extend its machinery for processing high-strength materials with the addition of three strip feeding lines, including a high-performance leveller from Schnutz.
At the pressing plant of Adient, seat rails are manufactured on several lines.
“The high-strength material used requires special treatment in order to obtain the required flatness with optimal residual stress in the strip material,” says Henrich. “Only when the geometry of the leveller matches the particular product can the best results be achieved.”
That reason is why Schnutz uses simulation programs to analyse the working processes and plastic forming behaviour of the materials used in order to modify the machines to suit customer-specific requirements.
For further information www.schnutz.com

New markets and digital business models

In the 2018 fiscal year, Schuler increased its order intake by 10% with successful sales in new markets and digitised applications.

However, ongoing pressure to make adjustment in Germany, international trade conflicts and special effects had a significant negative impact on the press manufacturer’s sales.
“We will consistently focus Schuler on new markets, digital business models and profitable core businesses,” says CEO Domenico Iacovelli. In mid-2019, Schuler and Porsche plan to start building their joint press plant, which has now finally been agreed. Operation is scheduled to start in 2021.
Schuler’s incoming orders rose to €1255bn in 2018 (previous year €1141bn). Despite the rather low order backlog at the end of 2017, group sales remained virtually unchanged at €1212bn (previous year €1220bn). The regions of Europe and China grew, while business in North America suffered significant losses.
CFO Norbert Broger says: “Last year was very challenging in terms of operation and strategy. This is why it was all the more important that we were able to reverse the negative trend in incoming orders and achieve an increase of 10% for the first time. We therefore entered the New Year with a decent order backlog of €926m. As a result, and thanks to the cost reduction measures already initiated, we are confident that we will be able to show medium-term earnings improvements.”
Irrespective of the positive order development, the pressure to adapt remains high, especially in Germany, says Iacovelli. “In 2018, we therefore began making Schuler more dynamic and bringing customer-driven innovations to market more quickly. The aim is to concentrate on the group’s profitable core business and increase profitability in the coming years. This includes the consistent segregation of loss-making business areas wherever necessary.”
For further information www.schulergroup.com

Complex medical parts get the VISI treatment

A mould maker producing tools for thermoplastic materials and die castings is relying on the specialist VISI Analysis module to discover critical areas at an early stage of the design process, which greatly simplifies its work.

Mecca TP serves a variety of industry sectors, including medical, automotive, household appliances, furniture and eyewear. Co-owner Antonio Tognon says that the company’s moulds have to be produced swiftly and accurately, first time every time, without the need for changing them unless requested by the customer.
“And in those cases, the amendments have to be carried out quickly,” he states. “Using VISI to design and machine our mould tools means we can guarantee they’ll give a high mechanical performance with precision movements, along with a high aesthetic quality of the moulded products, for long production periods.”
Tognon says the company is also playing an increasingly proactive role in working with customers to co-design the finished, moulded products. “In addition, we support our customers with precision machining, mechanical equipment construction, reverse engineering and reconstruction of damaged mechanical parts, or those without design documentation, as well as dimensional checks.”

Founded in 1985, the company is now run jointly by Tognon and Renato Prosdocimo, based in a 2000 sq m production unit in Bigolino di Valdobbiadene, Treviso, Italy, with an annual turnover of around €1.5m.
“Over the years we’ve developed our production process in order to minimise manual intervention on the moulds, controlling the machining operations,” says Tognon. The company has always adopted advanced technologies, from two- and four-axis wire EDM, to high-speed three- and five-axis milling, along with Mecca TP’s CADCAM VISI software. VISI is proving to be a vital aspect in ensuring that the moulds are consistently manufactured to the precision required, from the design process through to the mould tools being cut.
Mecca TP produces between 40 and 80 moulds a year, ranging in size from 200 x 200 x 200 mm to 600 x 800 x 700 mm, using a variety of metals. VISI Mould is used to carry out the design, while electrodes are modelled and machined with VISI Machining 3D, which is also used for cutting plates and moulding parts, along with Machining Strategist and VISI Wire.
“Our in-house team follows the mould design, adopting various solutions for mould movements, conditioning circuits, and injection and extraction systems,” says Tognon. “In order to optimise the final product and the moulding activity, we pay precise attention to the analysis, proposing possible improvements.”
Tognon says VISI is used in the preliminary stage, before the design process begins, to analyse details such as drafts, undercuts and thicknesses, and draw up possible dimensions of the finished moulds.
“We import customer STEP, IGES or Parasolid files and analyse the geometry in depth, to define the quality of the mathematical model, while correcting incomplete or inaccurate geometries.”

The company moves on to create the mould basement and define details, before sending the component parts to the different CAM stations for milling, wire cutting, and electrode modelling and construction.
Tognon cites an example of a stainless steel mould that Mecca TP has developed to replace an existing mould used by a medical sector client: “The mould was needed to produce a small circular component with a diameter of approximately 40 mm; the part had to be moulded in a white chamber on eight impressions, within a complete discharge cycle of less than 20 seconds.
The product is described as being complex, with irregular surfaces and a different front and back finish, and a shiny, mirrored surface on one side.
“We created a completely new movement, very different from the mould originally being used by the customer,” says Tognon. “Our proposal optimised the intrinsic characteristics of the impressions, and the operational flexibility, ensuring the highest level of productivity. Each imprint has a completely interchangeable matrix and punch, which are fixed to the mould by screws. This means we can replace them when they are worn out, without changing the entire mould, even if the mould is inside the machine. It also means we can produce different products using the same mould.”
Tognon says the main challenge was to find a way to free undercuts, and to create the movements necessary to obtain a high-quality piece – moulded from soft adhesive PVC – in the correct way, avoiding possible wastage. The team used VISI Analysis to import, prepare and validate what was required.
“Being able to identify complex mathematics in advance let us discover critical areas at an early stage of the project, and greatly simplified our work,” he says. “It also led to a significant reduction in both design and production times.”

Pointing out that VISI Mould handles the entire design process, Tognon says it provides the company with specific automation that guides the operator throughout the project’s development: “It’s a simple procedure, with the help of numerous catalogues of main suppliers’ components, which facilitates everything we need.”
VISI gives Mecca TP the capability of managing and graphically displaying mould creation and any required changes in real time.
“This means we can check the results immediately and effectively, giving us maximum design freedom to combat the complexity we have to face in order to satisfy our customers’ ever-changing needs.”
In conclusion, Tognon says VISI optimises the company’s entire process from design to delivery, and means the company can comply with increasingly tight delivery times: “We see very complex moulds every day. Calling them ‘moulds’ is almost reductive. I’d rather define them as ‘advanced equipment’.”
For further information www.visicadcam.com

New-generation control from AP&T

AP&T has produced a new generation control system that is designed to simplify the utilisation of presses, automation equipment and production lines. The upgrade entails a comprehensive overhaul of the LOGOS user interface, as well as functionality and hardware.

“Our ambition is to make operation as simple as possible for everyone who uses our machinery on a day-to-day basis,” says AP&T vice CTO Christer Bäckdahl. “Consequently, we have listened very carefully to the opinions of customers and operators, and worked to satisfy their wishes in our development work. At the same time, we have put a great deal of effort into ensuring that operators who are accustomed to our machinery will feel at home in the environment.”
One thing that many users have asked for is larger screens. Now, operators have access to 22” screens with full HD for stationary PCs and 7” screens for hand-held mobile panels. Both have widescreen format (16:9) and high resolution. The number of pixels is 2.5 times higher than previously, while the graphics, which present a clear AP&T identity, have been developed to give a good overview of the displayed information and to facilitate navigation. This feature applies to the alarm view, for example, which gives a quick overview of the machine’s status.
The functionality itself has also been improved, at least according to Lars Prysander, who has been the development project manager and one of the programmers for the new system version.
“One of the many examples is that previously two clicks were needed to switch between the various machines connected to the system,” he says. “However, we’ve now added an extra menu with shortcut keys, which means only a single click is needed to switch from one unit to another.”
For further information www.aptgroup.com