Cost risks and the loss of knowledge threatened by demographic change, form a scenario for the toolmaking industry for which automated tool design could be a conceivable way out.

Partial automation of the demolding system represents an important step towards complete automation of injection mold design.

16:9

Automated Design of the Demolding Systems of Injection Molds

Werkzeugkonstruktion

Dienstleistungen

Werkzeug-, Formen- und Modellbau

Künstliche Intelligenz für die Qualitätssicherung

Industrie 4.0

Industrie 4.0 für die Qualitätssicherung

Spritzgießwerkzeuge

Kunststoffverarbeitung: Maschinen und Komponenten

Werkzeuge für die Kunststoffverarbeitung

Spritzgießsimulation

Software

Simulation

Machine Learning

Datenanalyse

Analysetools, FEM

Machine Learning für die Qualitätssicherung

Digitaler Zwilling

Anticipation of a Larger  System Landscape

The use of passive RFID sensors as insert parts enables wireless monitoring of the injection molding process. In contrast to conventional methods, the injection mold and the sensor technology are separated. The individual, part-integrated process monitoring, control and documentation can be extended with the same sensor element also to the further life cycle of the injection molding part. 

Part Integrated Temperature Monitoring of Injection Molding Parts with RFID Sensor Tags 

RFID

Spritzgießen

Temperatursensoren

Rückverfolgbarkeit, Traceability

Wireless Life Cycle Monitoring in the Injection Molded Part 

For a cutlery series made of a new biopolymer, three full hot runner molds with digital process monitoring were developed in close cooperation with mold maker Uniform and hot runner specialist Ewikon.

The 16-drop family mold on the machine. The removal and packaging of the parts are fully automated

Complete Digital Hot Runner Solution for Automated Biopolymer Processing

Kunststoffverarbeitung: Verfahren

Condition Monitoring / Prozessüberwachung

Instandhaltung

Biokunststoffe

Kunststoff Werkstoffe

Virtual Reality für die Qualitätssicherung

Heißkanalsysteme

Komponenten für die Kunststoffverarbeitung

Process Reliability Is Crucial

Over past months, many in-house workflows and development processes have slowed down and also changed. Nevertheless, time has not stood still, also not in injection molding technology. The debate and development have been shaped by two themes: digitalization and the circular economy. Below are some examples of developments and projects that underpin this trend.

Two displays are seamlessly integrated into the continuously 3D-formed instrument panel

Innovative Injection Molding in Times of Pandemic

Schaumspritzgießen

Steuern, Regeln

Mehrkomponenten-Spritzgießen

Folientechnik (IMD, IML, FIM, u.a.)

Digitale Transformation

Wirtschaft

Innovationen und neue Technologie

Spritzgieß-Sonderverfahren

Nachhaltigkeit

Umweltmanagement

Schnecken und Plastifiziersysteme

Spritzgießmaschinen

Industrie 4.0 für die Kunststoffverarbeitung

Machine Learning / Künstliche Intelligenz für die spanende Fertigung

Industrie 4.0 für die spanende Fertigung

Kunststoff-Recycling

Kunststoff-Aufbereitung

Lasermarkieren

Oberflächentechnik

Laserbearbeitungen

Inline- / Online-Messsysteme

Qualitätssicherung

Qualitätssicherung Kunststoff

Kreislaufwirtschaft

There Is More beyond the Horizon

For the first time a readable digital watermark, imperceptible to the naked eye, has been incorporated into an injection-molded flip cap.

On the flip cap, the digital watermark is not visually perceptible, but can be read like a code by specialized high speed camera

Integration of Digital Watermarks in Complex Injection Molded Packaging Products

Bildverarbeitung

Fertigungsautomation

Barcode-Systeme

Identtechnik

Inspektion, Analyse und Sortierung von Rohmaterial

Key to Purity of Recycled Resins

The digital shadow is the core concept of the Cluster of Excellence “Internet of Production” at RWTH Aachen University. It represents the data trace of an asset to describe its real behavior. In the Plastics Innovation Center 4.0 (PIC 4.0), digital shadows, e.g. the data trace of a sensor, are used to optimize processes taking into account real behavior and to determine simulation quality.

The construction of the PIC 4.0 proceeds and throws its shadow on the Campus Melaten.

Part 7 of the Series: How the Digital Shadow Enlightens Real Processes in the PIC 4.0

Sensorik für Kunststoff-Verarbeitungsmaschinen

Out of the Shadow into the Light

Internal pressure loads are typical for fiber-reinforced plastic components. To increase the burst strength of components, the fiber orientation can be modified in a targeted way during injection molding by means of a rotating mold core. A newly developed simulation method allows this modified fiber orientation to be taken into account at the design stage.

Practical implementation of a mold system with rotating core.

Mold System with Rotating Core Improves Mechanical Properties

Werkstoffprüfung, mechanisch

Messtechnik

Werkstoffprüfung

Verbundwerkstoffe / Werkstoffverbunde

Faserverbundwerkstoffe

Andere Werkstoffe

Design Methodology for Parts Subject to Internal Pressure

Family molds belong to the state-of-the-art in injection molding – at least when wall thicknesses and volumes of individual components vary considerably. Using a trial mold soon ready for series production, Synventive demonstrates that – though demanding – optimal process control can be achieved using the right technology. The filling of each mold cavity is controlled individually and in real time. The Kunststoffe editorial team were among the first guests at the new Tech Center.

View into the mold space of the Engel Duo 2700 at the Tech Center. In the background, a 6-axis robot with 180 kg load-bearing capacity which removes the components.

Single-Shot Injection Molding of Heterogeneous Components

Schröder, Susanne

Leading-Edge Process Control

The plastics processor TKW Molding, which specializes in safety-related automotive components, is responding to the increasing requirements of its tier 1 and OEM customers by extensively automating its injection molding production. This also encompasses downstream process steps, such as integrated component testing, traceable part deposition and packaging. The company has been working closely with Arburg in this field since 2020.

A robotic system removes the parts from TKW’s 8+8-cavity mold.

Fully Automated In-Mold Assembly Process at TKW Molding

Optische Mess- und Prüftechnik

Montage-Spritzgießen

KFZ-Zulieferer

Safely Belted in

Pharmaceutical crimp caps generally consist of a thin aluminum sheet and a plastic component, and are used to seal medical vials, for example for vaccines. Through a combined deep-drawing and backmolding process with previous inline laser treatment of the thin aluminum sheet, the process can be significantly shortened. The media-proof joining together of the two materials is carried out through a mechanically interlocking connection.

A crimp cap for injection vials is manufactured in a two-step process.

Combined Deep-Drawing and Backmolding Process with Mechanically Interlocking Joint

Hybridtechnik

Aluminiumlegierungen

Metall Werkstoffe

NE-Metalle

Tiefziehen

Verfahren für die spanlose Fertigung

Simulation Stanzen / Umformen

Laserstrukturieren

Hybrid-Spritzgießen (Metall / Kunststoff)

Medizintechnik

Medizinprodukte

Process Chain for the Production of Hybrid Medical Products

The Zahoransky subsidiary in Coimbatore, India, has been managed by a new dual leadership team since March 1, 2022. For the first time, there is also a woman in the top management circle, Sathyapriya Balakrishnan.

The new dual management team for India: Sathyapriya Balakrishnan (Managing Director) and Reinhard Schnurr (Managing Director)

Personen

kunststoffe.de

Zahoransky Introduces Expanded Management Team in India

Arburg has adopted a clear message for its trade fair appearance at the K 2022 in Düsseldorf: „There is only a Plan A“.

In the arburgGreenworld pavilion of the VDMA Circular Economy Forum, an Allrounder 370 A with recyclate package is manufacturing “Greenline” wall plugs from Fischer.

Messe K-Kunststoffmesse

kunststoffe-international.com

Energieeffizienz

Sustainability thanks to Digitalization

At K 2022, Engel, with its partners Alpla Group, Brink and IPB Printing, is presenting a quantum leap for the packaging industry. Thin-wall containers can for the first time be produced from PET directly by injection molding in only one process step.

Fig. 1. The thin-walled containers are injection molded from rPET.

Schmelzefilter

Polyethylenterephthalat

Thermoplaste

Kunststoff-Rezyklat

Processing rPET by Thin-Wall  Injection Molding

With the MicroJect Advanced, Faurecia, a company of the Forvia Group, is presenting a new manufacturing process for foam injection molding.

Single-source component: the door panel comes directly from the injection-molding machine as a ready-to-install visible component with different grains.

New Injection Molding Technology for Foamed Parts with Class A Surfaces

Werkzeugbeschichten

Dienstleistungen in der Metallbearbeitung

Design Surfaces thanks to Innovative Mold Coating

With Hekutip QC, a quality control assistant for pipette tips, Hekuma and Ziemann & Urban have developed a standalone solution that covers wide-ranging testing requirements fully automatically, as well as being compact and swift to deploy.

Hekutip QC covers wide-ranging testing requirements fully automatically, as well as being compact and swift to deploy.

Medizintechnik (KU)

Kunststoffverarbeitung

Messe Fakuma

Prozessautomation

A Standalone Measuring Station with a Wide Testing Range

How Track-and-Trace Technologies Can Support Mold Management

The article demonstrates the use of digital twins for molds in injection molding through the integration of track-and-trace technologies for data collection.

Industry 4.0 is characterized by autonomous production systems in which the “things”, so-called assets, communicate with each other and decide independently. This can be achieved through digital twins as a virtual representation of these assets and digital shadows as decision supporters. The following article demonstrates the use of digital twins for molds in injection molding through the integration of track-and-trace technologies for data collection.

Industry 4.0 technologies aim to secure the international competitiveness of high-wage countries. This is assisted by the merging of the physical world with the digital world to create so-called cyber-physical systems, in which the separate components (assets) communicate autonomously [1]. Digital twins represent the image of the real assets in the virtual world in order to use the advantages of Industry 4.0 [2]. Characteristic for the digital twin is the ability to influence real systems and interact with them. The digital shadow, on the other hand, exists only for a specific purpose. Therefore, the digital shadow just extracts and processes the data that are relevant to fulfil the purpose. The digital shadow furthermore cannot exert any influence on the real system and therefore serves primarily as data context and not as an active, interacting system component [3].

There are a number of advantages of establishing digital twins of molds. Employees can focus on value-adding operations [4] because time-consuming manual bookings of molds can be reduced or mold data can be automatically passed on [5, 6]. The current state in the production can be transparently observed at any time by molds transmitting their status to a higher-level control system [7], for example information about the current location or the setup status of the mold. Apart from that, information about the mold itself is available, e. g. the number of completed injection cycles, in order to initiate maintenance based on this at the right time [8].

The continuous information on the mold status also influences the behavior of other system components. For example, if a mold is set up on one machine, other machines cannot request it for immediate use. On the other hand, if this data is automatically recorded, potential input errors by employees can also be avoided and consistent data records can be generated [9]. High data consistency ensures, for example, the quality of planning simulation [5] for production control and consequently improves decision-making [4], e. g. for optimal scheduling as regards minimizing mold setups or changeover times. Digital shadows support this by extracting the data needed for the decision-making from the entirety of data and consolidating the data into planning-relevant information [10].

The Asset Administration Shell  as Digital Twin

Besides data acquisition, data structuring of the digital twin is essential. To this end, the concept of “asset administration shells” has been established for the implementation of the digital twin [11]. The asset administration shell consists of two main building blocks: the manifest and the component manager (Fig. 1). The manifest is comparable to an identity card. On the one hand, it clearly identifies the asset and, on the other, it describes the attributes of the asset based on previously defined features. Moreover, the asset administration shell allows the encapsulation of relevant attributes in submodels for a specific application case.

The component manager specifies interfaces for communication between the outside world and the asset, e. g. by the listing of endpoints and permissible communication protocols. The boxing of asset administration shells is also permissible [2]. Both the implementation and the access to the asset administration shell is technology-independent [12, 13]. Therefore, track-and-trace technologies generally are suitable for manipulating the attribute values of asset administration shells. This is shown below using a practical application example for mold management using RFID technology.

Classification of RFID Compared to Other Tracking Technologies

Within the last few decades, different tracking technologies for a variety of applications have achieved industrial maturity. Many of them were fundamentally developed as early as the 1990s. Besides optically identifiable barcode variants (classic barcode, QR codes, 3D and 4D codes), transmitter/receiver-based systems (RFID, NFC) for discreet tracking were also used. Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) like GPS, cellular or also Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and ultra-bandwidth technology are suitable for continuous tracking. The appropriate technology must be selected depending on the particular application. The criteria may be e. g. the technology maturity, the costs, the susceptibility to failure, the information content and the automatability. Extensive technology comparisons already exist regarding various criteria [14].

There is no need for continuous recording of tracking molds, therefore the choice must be made between optical identifiable markings (QR codes) and transmitter/receiver-based systems. Optical markings must be reliably visible for the reader and, because of that, have limited suitability for the tracking of molds. Based on its good scalability, RFID as a transmitter/receiver-based system offers itself for automated applications [15]. Both transponders and corresponding readers are, unlike other transmitter/receiver-based systems, cost-efficient and very flexible in terms of the range, the demarcation of the area to be recorded and the modularity.

Some applications in the industry, e. g. moldmaking from Phoenix Contact [16], have already made use of RFID technology. For these reasons, the application described below uses RFID systems.

In the demonstrated application, molds are equipped with RFID transponders and specific storage positions and current locations of the molds are continuously monitored by corresponding antennas. As a result, mold movements can be recorded at any time and relevant data can be transferred into the system.

To increase the transparency of the production, the digital mold twin should show the current location of the real mold in real time and without manual intervention. Apart from that, the storage position should be optimized based on the number of mold movements, whereby the position of frequently used molds is located near the base so that these molds are more easily and quickly accessible. For this purpose, the asset administration shell submodel ”mold storage” will be modelled, which contains the relevant attributes plus possible characteristics (Fig. 2). Besides the attribute Current_location recorded via RFID, the submodel includes the attributes Status, Opt_storage_position (the optimal storage position) and Time_of_removal.

If the relevant attributes should change over time, the asset administration shells can be adapted easily. The structuring of the data took place in the JSON format, which is a versatile exchange format that can be easily integrated into many software applications.

The digital shadow should support logistics staff with the determination of a suitable mold storage position in the form of an assistance system. Relevant for that are the attributes Opt_storage_position and Time_of_removal, the attributes Current_location and Status are not addressed by the digital shadow. Through this automatic logging, a history of moving times is created, which is saved in the attribute Time_of_removal.

The digital shadow takes this history for every mold and combines it into a data trace. Using an algorithm, it establishes a ranking in which the molds are sorted by their number of movements and assigned to a corresponding storage place. The updated storage position is automatically logged into the attribute Opt_storage_position after confirmation by a logistic staff member (Fig. 3). If necessary, the algorithm could be expanded by any additional conditions, e. g. by taking into account the size and weight of the mold for the selection of its storage position. The only requirements for this are corresponding attributes in the asset administration shell and the correct recording of relevant data.

One advantage of attribute-based asset administration shells is the standardized database, which can use different services. These services can be deployed modularly, so that, using an asset administration shell, a service-oriented architecture (SOA) can be realized. Also, the “Plug and Play” idea is practicable with asset administration shells that are structured in a standardized manner.

To illustrate the described application, the Institute for Plastics Processing (IKV) in Aachen, Germany, is working on a demonstrator. On the one hand, the data structure of the digital shadow will be developed and, on the other, an exemplary recording of molds using RFID will be implemented in the technical center.

The concept of digital twins and digital shadows can be applied to the management of molds. Through the standardized asset administration shells, which include all relevant attributes, digital twins can be implemented for the virtual mapping of molds. Track- and-trace technologies like RFID are suitable for manipulating attributes. All in all, the digital twin can increase the transparency of production. In addition, the digital shadow can be used as a service module, as this article shows, based on the optimization of the storage position of molds.

Further studies are dealing with the creation of other asset administration shells and submodels for other assets, so that all relevant assets of injection molding production are transferred to the virtual world and supported by the digital shadow.

[1] Kagermann, H.; Lukas, W. D.; Wahlster, W.: Industrie 4.0: Mit dem Internet der Dinge auf dem Weg zur vierten industriellen Revolution. VDI Nachrichten 13 (2011)

[2] Adolphs, P. et al.: Struktur der Verwaltungsschale – Fortentwicklung des Referenzmodells für die Industrie 4.0-Komponente. Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWi), Berlin 2016

[3] Kritzinger, W. et al.: Digital Twin in manufacturing: A categorical literature review and classification. IFAC-PapersOnLine 51 (2018) 11, pp. 1016–1622

[4] Kagermann, H. (Hrsg.) et al.: Umsetzungsempfehlungen für das Zukunftsprojekt Industrie 4.0 – Abschlussbericht des Arbeitskreises Industrie 4.0. acatech 2013

[5] Niehues, M. et al.: Organisation, Qualität und IT-Systeme für Planung und Betrieb. In: Reinhart, G. (Hrsg.): Handbuch Industrie 4.0. Hanser, München 2017, pp. 137–167

[6] Schuh, G.; Stich, V.: Produktion am Standort Deutschland. FIR e. V. an der RWTH Aachen, Aachen 2013

[7] Obermaier, R. (Hrsg.): Handbuch Industrie 4.0 und Digitale Transformation. Springer Fachmedien, Wiesbaden 2019

[8] Münzl, M.: Werkzeugverwaltung mit RFID für Spritzgießer – Ein Schritt zu Industrie 4.0. Firmenschrift der Balluff GmbH, Neuhausen a.d.F. 2016

[9] Bartneck, N. (Hrsg.): Prozesse optimieren mit RFID und Auto-ID: Grundlagen, Problemlösung und Anwendungsbeispiele. Publicis Corporate Publishing, Erlangen 2008

[10] Schuh, G. et al.: Effizientere Produktion mit Digitalen Schatten. Zeitschrift für wirtschaftlichen Fabrikbetrieb 115 (2020) S1, pp. 105–107

[11] Wagner, C. et al.: The role of the Industry 4.0 asset administration shell and the digital twin during the life cycle of a plant. 22nd IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA), Limassol 2017

[12] Plattform Industrie 4.0 (Hrsg.): VWS-Referenzmodellierung. Berlin 2021

[13] Plattform Industrie 4.0 (Hrsg.): Functional View of the Asset Administration Shell in an Industrie 4.0 System Environment. Berlin 2021

[14] Bauer, M.; Bienzeisler, B.; Rohm, M.: Track and Trace Technologien im Überblick. Kurzstudie des Fraunhofer-Instituts für Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation (IAO), Stuttgart 2019

[15] Tamm, G.; Tribowski, C.: RFID. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg 2010

[16] Moldehn, A.: Beispiel für IoT: der RFID Tool Finder. Firmenschrift der Phoenix Contact GmbH & Co. KG, URL: <a href="https://blog.phoenixcontact.com/hr-de/beispiel-fuer-iot-der-rfid-tool-finder/" target="_blank">https://blog.phoenixcontact.com/hr-de/beispiel-fuer-iot-der-rfid-tool-finder/</a> abgerufen am 06.09.2021

Institut für Kunststoffverarbeitung IKV in Industrie und Handwerk an der RWTH Aachen

https://www.ikv-aachen.de

Ausgabenartikel

An RFID reader records whether a mold is ready for the setup process

Fig. 1. Basic structure of the asset administration shell, consisting of the manifest and the components manager

Fig. 2. Using the asset administration shell, the mold is represented as a digital twin and exchanges information via RFID with its environment,  e. g. with the storage position, the injection molding machines and unloading stations

Fig. 3. The digital shadow uses the data recorded by RFID to suggest an optimum storage position for the mold and to carry this out if a staff member confirms it