2009 ENGEL HL Award

The ENGEL HL Awards 2009 were presented on 27th May against the backdrop of the ENGEL Symposium 09. As the highlight of the ENGEL evening at the Linz Design Center, the awards were presented to companies that use ENGEL injection moulding machines with tie-bar-less clamping units and that apply the concept in an especially innovative and economic manner. Gold, silver and bronze went – in this order – to Braun GmbH in Walldurn/Germany, to Oechsler AG in Ansbach/Germany and to Härter-Mecutec GmbH & Co KG in Albstadt/Germany.

The awards ceremony took place against the backdrop of the ENGEL evening on 27th May at the Linz Design Center. Out of a total of 27 entries from 8 different countries an independent jury – Prof. Ing. Elmar Moritzer from the University of Paderborn, Alfred A. Bulitz, CEO Gira, Giersiepen GmbH & Co KG and Dipl. Ing. Alexander Büchler, Senior Partner & Publisher hb media GmbH – chose the six "best" concepts. The jury looked for advanced technical solutions and economic benefits compared to production with conventional machines.

The winners
First place went to Braun GmbH in Walldurn/Germany. Braun GmbH belongs to American Procter & Gamble AG and is a competence centre for hair and body care products. The submitted project demonstrated an innovative method for manufacturing the water-proof housing of the new Silk Epil 7000 epilator. It is designed as a 3-component part. And the injection mould is correspondingly large, complex and difficult to monitor. The unique thing about the application is the way the finished parts are placed on the 4-positions index plate directly in the machine operator's view. This facilitates quality assessment of the finished parts by the machine operator during the start-up phase and process optimisation but at the same time necessitates lateral part take-off. As there are no tie-bars in the way of this, there is no need for special tricks. Another advantage, and one that is quite decisive in this case, is the fully usable mould area, which makes it possible to deploy a relatively small machine. And this was essential as the space in the "machine corridor" designated for the job, and the limited floor load, would have made it impossible to deploy a larger machine.

Second place went to Oechsler AG from Ansbach/Germany. In 1864, Matthias Oechsler founded a button producing company. Today, the company based in Ansbach, Germany, is well-known for its industry-specific solutions in automobile manufacturing, medical technology, mobile communications and industrial technology. The project that received the award here focused on the manufacturing of automobile key housings based on a design patented by Oechsler. One major element of this design is the use of a tie-bar-less ENGEL victory 180 with four injection units. The reason for this was that it offered the best compromise between available mounting space and clamping force for the highly complex 4-component injection mould. A similar concept based on a clamping unit with tie-bars would have necessitated a machine that was one or two sizes larger.

The third place went to Härter-Mecutec GmbH & Co KG from Albstadt/Germany. The award was given for a plant design that leveraged the ENGEL e-victory 310/120's unimpeded lateral access to the tie-bar-less clamping unit in the production of pluggable sensors for air-flow meters. This plant design solved two problems: first, the need to keep the arms on the robot as short as possible and thus maximise the required insert-placing precision for the sensitive metal contacts and second, the need to keep the overall height of the plant as low as possible – Mecutec uses production shops originally designed for another application built with relatively low overhead clearance.. 

Places four to six
In addition to the gold, silver and bronze trophies, places four to six were awarded with citations of recognition. Fourth place went to Eifler Kunststofftechnik GmbH from Bielefeld/Germany. The certificate for fifth place went to Leicht-Müller Syscotec GmbH & Co KG from Remchingen/Germany, and sixth place to Kramski North America from Largo/Florida, USA.