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Engel Austria and Werner Koch Maschinentechnik have expanded the reach of OPC UA-based communication within injection molding, with the machine manufacturer and the supplier of auxiliary equipment jointly developing an OPC UA interface that integrates presses with mixing and dosing systems.

Now the companies say Koch’s dosing and mixing units can be integrated with the CC300 control unit of the Engel injection molding machines via OPC UA and operated via the control panel on the press. With its service-oriented platform-independent and freely scalable structure, Engel says OPC UA offers great flexibility, as well as data security.

The mixing ratio or recipe combining the base resin, additives and master batches are often still set manually in many applications. To do this, a separate control unit is typically required on the injection molding machine. The integration of dosing and mixing units with the machine control unit offers the advantage of being able to directly transfer the part’s dataset, and with it the recipe, directly to the dosing unit upon mounting the mold. This automatically configures the mixing ratio.

Since the dosing process is centrally controlled via the machine display, the need for the additional control unit is eliminated. Alerts from the dosing and mixing unit are also output via the CC300 machine panel.

Engel injection molding machines can currently use OPC UA to talk to a large range of peripheral devices, including temperature control units, hot runners and LSR dosing systems, for which EUROMAP recommendations also exist. Dosing and mixing units for thermoplastics have now been added. Engel notes that standardized interfaces can simplify communication within a production cell, regardless of the various equipment manufacturers, considerably.