ENGEL Software: Driving Digital Transformation in Injection Molding
20.11.2023
Updated on 04/02/2025: We have revised this article to include the latest developments and provide the most up-to-date information.
ENGEL Software drives digital transformation in injection molding, supporting manufacturers along the entire production process. To provide a holistic experience, the e-connect customer portal is gradually being extended to a production portal. To allow this to happen, ENGEL is relying – among other things – on the know-how of software vendor TIG GmbH. Following the takeover in 2016, the company is now being fully integrated with the ENGEL group.
The vision is clear: "We want every injection moulder to use our e-connect portal as their default start page one day and we want them to find everything they need for their day-to-day production," as Gerhard Dimmler, CTO of the ENGEL Group, explains. ENGEL is deriving its inject 4.0 strategy from this vision. Already introduced at K 2022, the strategy envisages expanding the previous customer portal to provide a production portal. The production portal will then be compatible with all manufacturers, giving injection moulders the ability to map all the value-added stages of their production on the portal.
ENGEL acquired software vendor TIG, which developed the authentig MES solution, among other products, back in 2016. Some years later, the distribution of authentig was brought into the ENGEL fold and assigned to the Digital Sales department, headed by Hannes Zach. As part of its digital transformation strategy, ENGEL software is fully integrating TIG know-how to enhance automation in injection molding. The company will be merged into the ENGEL Group on 1 January 2024. ENGEL will take over all the employees, and the headquarters in Rankweil, Vorarlberg, Austria, will also be retained. Hannes Pils, previously the company's CEO now has the role of Head of Service & Consulting in ENGEL Customer Service.
Automation in Injection Molding: ENGEL's sim link Now Compatible with MOLDEX3D
ENGEL is also presenting another innovation for the design phase – the first of the four phases along the injection moulding process.
sim link, a solution from the inject 4.0 family for a bidirectional exchange of data between the simulation and the injection moulding machine, is being expanded and is now also compatible with MOLDEX3D. In product development, the question of the manufacturability of a part is key. Simulation delivers the answer for the injection moulding processes here. Despite this, a survey shows that many injection moulders fail to integrate the expertise from simulation into production and, conversely, that actual parameters from production rarely find their way back into the simulation either.
The result is time-consuming and cost-intensive iteration loops to optimise the mould and the production process. ENGEL expands its automation in injection molding capabilities with sim link, optimizing the connection between simulation and injection molding machines.
ENGEL presented sim link for the first time at the K 2019. Thus far, the tool has been available for Moldflow (Autodesk) and CADMOULD (SIMCON). Release 1.2 saw the application spectrum expanded to include the MOLDEX3D simulation software. Using sim link is an intuitive and efficient experience. Users can already store the physical dynamics and performance data of the machine intended for sampling the mould and for production later on, along with the material data, before simulating injection moulding.
In a second step, the process settings determined in the simulation are transferred via sim link to the control unit of the injection moulding machine as an initial setting data set. This makes it possible to produce high quality parts in the shortest possible time. In a third step, the processing settings, process parameters and measurement results from the machine, optimised during operation, can be stored and fed back into the simulation program. This leads to more accurate data and optimised simulations, which strengthens digital transformation in injection molding by improving accuracy, efficiency, and automation in injection molding machines.
04/02/2025
ENGEL Software in Action: Digital Solutions for Research and Teaching
The all-electric ENGEL e-mac 100, which was recently handed over to the Leibniz Institute for Composite Materials (IVW), enables precise and energy-efficient plastics processing. It is used for practical experiments and optimally combines theory and practice. Thanks to ENGEL sim link, students can apply simulation methods directly in the injection molding process.
"sim link facilitates the cooperation between the simulation experts and the process engineers," as Alfred Angerer from Digital Injection Moulding Development at ENGEL explains. "This is how we create a basis for ensuring that the lessons learned from the simulation are actually used in the real world." All told, sim link improves the quality of the simulation with real-world data, accelerating the sample inspection process and process optimisation, while reducing costs and boosting productivity.
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