Trade-fair premiere of the redesigned Allrounder 820 H at Plast 2018

Arburg's newly designed Allrounder 820 H

Milan - Arburg has chosen Plast 2018 to present its newly designed hybrid Allrounder 820 H with a clamping force of 4,000 kN to international trade visitors for the first time outside the German parent plant in Lossburg. The machine on display is still a ‘prototype’ said an Arburg spokesperson: it will not become commercially available until the Fakuma show in October but will be sold globally from that time on.

The Allrounder 820 H follows in the footsteps of the Allrounder 1120 H (6,500 kN) and 920 H (5,000 kN) machines, becoming the third machine to undergo the fundamental restyling process being implemented by Arburg in gradual steps. The exhibited machine is equipped with the company’s new intuitive and efficient Gestica control system. The Easyslider control element allows movements to be simply and precisely controlled and displayed via variable-colour LED technology during set-up. Acceleration and deceleration can be controlled with a "swipe of the finger" along a bar at the edge of the screen.

In future, all the familiar Selogica functionalities will be integrated into the Gestica control system step-by-step. The Allrounder 1120 H features the Gestica control system as standard. All the further machine types converted to the new design – i.e. currently the size 920 H and 820 H machines – can optionally be equipped with the Gestica control system. Importantly, the choice of control system – Selogica or Gestica has no effect on the performance of the machine, as the only difference is the "Human Machine Interface" (HMI), which, in the case of the Gestica system, is modelled on today's smart mobile devices.

The black winding spools in tension strap production cell were produced on a freeformer.

Also on display at the stand was the Industry 4.0 production cell previously shown at other events, including the Technology Days earlier this year, in which a vertical Allrounder 375 V with a clamping force of 500 kN was producing different versions of a tension strap. Visitors select the version of strap they want on a screen, which is then produced on demand. The application, says Arburg, could be used, for example, for cable assembly in the automotive industry. Interestingly, the black spools, around which the straps are wound during production, were pointed out as having been 3D printed on a freeformer, as was the blue gripper on the Multilift Select robot removing the LSR valve closures moulded by a hydraulic LSR Allrounder 370 S, that was also on show.

“It shows that the freeformer can be used for much more than prototyping but is also suitable for making end products such as parts and components,” said an Arburg representative.

Underlining the growing importance of Additive Manufacturing, at Plast, the freeformer and the APF (Arburg Plastic Freeforming) process was being shown at a separate stand in the same hall.

Asked how the sales of the freeformer were doing, the company declined to give any precise figures. Stephan Doehler, European Director Sales, did emphasise, however, that the number of freeformers sold was growing, mainly to companies who ‘want to keep their prototyping activities in-house, away from others, for privacy reasons’.