PHOTO: Miqueli Mascaro, owner-manager of Fermolplast Components displays an example of the hair dryer for which housings are produced on the EcoPower

FERMOLPLAST, a Brazilian Battenfeld customer of longstanding, installed its first EcoPower from Wittmann Battenfeld at its São Paulo plant in 2011. Fermolplast has also purchased automation and peripheral equipment from the Wittmann group.

Since its foundation in 1982 as a mould-maker, Fermolplast has gathered a wealth of experience in manufacturing high-quality injection-moulded parts with state-of-the-art European injection moulding machinery. The company specializes in high-precision moulds for plastics injection moulding and supplies complete solutions in this area, including product planning and development, mould-making and manufacturing of the end product as well.

Today, the company has 24 injection moulding machines installed on a 5 200 m² production floor, with clamping forces ranging from 50 to 400 t, of which 15 have come from Battenfeld.

The Battenfeld machines currently installed at Fermolplast are mainly hydraulic machines from the reliable HM series and toggle machines from the TM series. In March 2011, Wittmann Battenfeld supplied the first all-electric machine from the PowerSeries, an EcoPower 180, which is used, for example, to produce housing components for hair dryers.

The EcoPower’s precision and high speed are mainly due to the direct drive of the injection unit via a circulating ball spindle, which minimizes transmission loss and enables exact control and repeatability of the metering and injection processes. The precise, efficient toggle drive of the clamping unit features high dynamism, positioning accuracy and energy-efficiency as well.

The extraordinary degree of energy efficiency is reached by using the braking energy of the drives, normally returned to the power supply network by an elaborate process, completely within the machine to provide the necessary voltage for the control system and for barrel heating. Depending on the application, the savings potential of this machine lies between 50 and 70%, compared to modern hydraulic machines.

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