Munich, Germany – KraussMaffei has added a new shuttle multicarrier which can be combined with both long fibre injection, structural component spraying and reinforced reaction injection moulding processes.
A machine has been installed at the company's TechCenter in Munich.
'The market for fibre-reinforced composite continues to develop very dynamically,' said Sebastien Schmidhuber, head of development of reaction process machinery 'That's why we are modernising and expanding our lightweight construction TechCentre and offering customers the chance to develop and test the new product-ready technologies,'
The new mould carrier is part of a complete system with a separate cab and robot for the LFI and SCS processes. A total of five different mixing heads are available in the TechCenter for the different tests and automation tasks.
A shuttle carrier, which can quickly move the bottom mould between machining stations, lies at the heart of the design. This enables polyurethane to be dispensed outside the camping unit if that is desired.
In addition, to help insert and remove mould components, KraussMaffei has made the upper and lower mould-fixing platens tilting.
The company explained that it has developed the machine because of the growth of long fibre injection (LFI) with polyurethane. Small trim parts for cars to large structural components with a Class A finish show the range of products possible. Moulding is typically below 10bar pressure. High-strength sandwich elements with LFI and honeycomb cores are possible.
In structural component spraying polyurethane is sprayed over glass fibre mats overlaid on a honeycomb core. A heated mould consolidates the composite.
The KM TechCenter has more than 4000 m² of space, and has machinery for more than 25 systems for injection moulding, reaction processing machinery and excretion technology. Machinery is available for internal tests, and customers can use them to optimise their processes.
