rapidFOX
Sustainability
Company
Get in touch
A medium injection mould weighs 800 kilograms. In many plants the change takes two hours, of which perhaps thirty minutes are actual fitting. The rest is waiting: for the overhead crane, for the forklift driver, for the colleague who lends a hand.
Fetch the mould from storage, bring it to the machine, run it into the platen, clamp it, connect cooling and ejector – then the same in reverse with the old mould. Running it in is the critical step: the mould has to go between the platens level, in one plane and without edge contact. A few millimetres out of level are enough for the centring not to engage. There are rarely more than two metres between machines, and the overhead crane covers everything but is elsewhere exactly when it is needed.
The most effective intervention is rarely a bigger unit but a dedicated one. A monorail or area rail system running above the machine row makes the mould change independent of the overhead crane. It travels easily, can be operated by one person and covers exactly the route needed every day: mould store, machine, mould store. Payload classes of 1,000 and 2,000 kilograms cover the great majority of changes.
A mould rarely hangs at its centre of gravity when taken by the eyebolt. We therefore design a beam with adjustable suspension points or – for recurring moulds – fixed mounts per mould type. That costs some engineering once and saves at every change the minutes otherwise spent aligning. Where several mould sizes run, a beam with detent positions is the practical answer.
Before proposing a unit we measure the route: how far the mould store is from the machine, how often changes happen, who waits for whom. In many plants the biggest saving lies not in lifting equipment but in a storage rack standing three metres closer. What remains we solve with the unit – and we work the saving out beforehand, not afterwards.
The jointed arm for millimetre-precise handling.
View device Lifting equipment · Crane systemsWide reach by slewing around the column.
View device Lifting equipment · Conveyor systemsThe whole area covered – in X and Y.
View deviceTechnically usually yes, organisationally rarely. The overhead crane serves the whole hall; during a mould change it, not the mould, is the bottleneck. A dedicated rail field above the machine row costs a fraction of a crane extension and makes the change plannable.
Take the heaviest regularly changed mould, add beam and lifting accessories and round up to the next class. The overhead crane stays for the rare exception above that – sizing a unit for the extreme case makes the everyday change expensive and sluggish.
Once a year by a competent person, documented in the inspection log – unit, lifting gear and accessories. With multi-shift operation and frequent changes a shorter interval can make sense; the risk assessment decides. We carry out the recurring inspection on request.
One short conversation usually settles more than three quotations. Call or write — you will reach an engineer directly.
Start typing – for example “balancer”, “SAP” or “pipe stress”.
Reach Entracon
How can we help?
Thank you.
