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At NPE2012, three firms announced new or expanded services for molders:

•Milacron’s Servtek aftermarket ����ý in Cincinnati offers a new capability for ordering spare parts online 24/7.

•Ube Machinery Inc., Ann Arbor, Mich., is offering three new services to help molders deal with difficult economic conditions. When machines are purchased at auction from a defunct plant, Ube contracts with buyers to remove, rig, and re-install them. Second, Ube provides rebuild and retrofit services. Third, Ube has purchased some used Ube machines and remanufactured and modernized them for resale at a fraction of the cost of new machines.

•At NPE, Wittmann Battenfeld, Inc., Torrington, Conn., highlighted its Web-Service 24/7, which is now up and running worldwide. For Wittmann injection machines with a Unilog B6 control system (based on Windows XP), the web service allows customers to telephone a service engineer at any time. Via the internet, the engineer can log in directly to the machine and an integrated Wittmann robot. If the press controller is equipped with a web cam, the technician can inspect parts the machine was molding. As a Wittmann spokesman put it, “Imagine doing this on a WiFi-equipped airplane at 30,000 feet!”