Plasticom group has been in Ashford, Kent for over 50 years. Originally known as D G Mortimer & Co Ltd and Ashford Mouldings Ltd. The company specialise in taking projects from a design stage through prototyping and into high volume manufacture. Sonia Simmonds, Director at Plasticom told Negri Bossi News, “We understand the need to invest in quality equipment, people and processes if we are to manufacture superior products and deliver first class service to our customers. We have a very well-equipped tool room, a class 7 cleanroom, injection moulding machines in the range 20T to 530T and processes that comply with the Medical Device Standard ISO 13485:2016.”

In addition, the company also specialise in multi-shot moulding accompanied by a series of post assembly and decoration technologies including Tampo printing, foil printing, sonic welding, and assembly. Plasticom are no stranger to the benefits offered from fully electric moulding machines particularly when producing medical diagnostic parts to regulatory standards.

Edwin Simmonds, Director and Husband of fellow Director Sonia had no reservations when it came to selecting machinery for his next medical project. Edwin said, “Over the years we have worked closely but not exclusively with Negri Bossi. Service and support has always been excellent and it made sense to look closely at their NOVA ET fully electric machine for this medical diagnostics project. As Negri Bossi were showing a NOVA ET 100T at Interplas we decided to travel up to Birmingham and take a closer look. On examination it was evident that the fully electric machine repeatability was in terms of cushion accuracy very impressive.

The machine was almost silent in operation and the control system and graphical user interface was practical, intuitive, and easy to pick up quickly. We were so impressed we bought the machine.”

Tony Gray, Sales Manager at Negri Bossi said, “Plasticom always set a high bar and expect its supplier partners like Negri Bossi to reach it. At Negri Bossi we knew that the NOVA ET fully electric machine would not disappoint. I did not hesitate to recommend it.”

 Sonia continues, “We were told that Negri Bossi NOVA ET fully electric machines were in high demand with orders outstripping supply in Europe. Fortunately, we moved quickly to secure this one at the show. It was delivered and installed in October and so far, it’s never missed a beat.”

Interplas is the UK’s leading plastics industry event and an exciting showcase for the manufacturing processes, technologies, and services essential to the plastics sector.

In its 70th year, Interplas 2021 we see more than 400 exhibitors present solutions, products, machines, and ideas from across the entire spectrum of moulding and forming machines as well as materials, automation, contract manufacturing and supporting technologies including software, testing, inspection, surface.

Interplas is the biggest plastics industry triennial event in the UK; for this reason, Negri Bossi is attending the show on stand D4, Hall 4. The stand is 150m2 with two Negri Bossi machines. One is the new Nova sT 180 with the Motus controller and a Sytrama S7 robot. On this machine it is running a water meter housing tool (A). The
part is moulded in ABS.

The other machine is a new all electric Nova eT 100; on this machine it is running a multi impression button tool again moulded in ABS (B). This part is then chrome plated. NB UK Staff will be present to welcome its customers and visitors.

Rochdale-based injection moulder and structural foam specialist Taylor Engineering & Plastics has invested in three new injection moulding machines from Negri Bossi UK’s BIPOWER and VECTOR lines, ranging from 800 to 2000 tonnes.

The investment worth over £1.5m strengthens TEP’s position as one of the UK’s leading suppliers of large moulded and painted components for the medical equipment, electric vehicle, automotive and earthmoving sectors.

Speaking of the investment, Ian Taylor, Technical Director at TEP, said:

“I am delighted to announce to the market that TEP recently completed the acquisition of three large-tonnage injection moulding machines from Negri Bossi UK. These new machines are in the 800-tonne to 2000-tonne range; the 2000-tonne BIPOWER has been installed and commissioned. The 800-tonne and 1300-tonne are on schedule to be delivered to our Rochdale plant before the end of the year.

“We approached Negri Bossi back in March to discuss our plans when we saw overall product demand increasing. Over the following few months, our teams have been working jointly on developing the right machine specifications to meet our needs for our current and new market sectors.

“The two-platen BIPOWER 2000-tonne has a shot capacity of 11.2kg and platens sizes of 2660mm x 2260mm.

“The 800-tonne and 1300-tonne we opted for are from Negri Bossi’s VECTOR machine range. They are proven machines and come with Negri’s energy-efficient electric screw drive and hydraulic clamping as standard. Not only do we have one of the best plasticising units available on the market today, but we will also reduce our energy costs by around 30%”.

In addition to new injection moulding machines, TEP has invested an additional £500,000 on new equipment for their paint spraying and finishing division. These latest investments put Taylor Engineering & Plastics at the forefront of big part production and finishing in Europe.

Ian Taylor added:

“We are seeing significant growth across all our current sectors and particularly in the medical equipment and electric vehicle markets.”

TEP was originally founded in 1949 as Taylor Patterns, pattern makers and toolmakers to the automotive sector. Moulding and painting processes were introduced throughout the sixties and seventies to meet emerging demand for OEM products requiring plastic enclosures. By 1977, TEP was established in its current format and continued its expansion with further injection moulding, structural foam moulding (ESF) and DCPD technologies, particularly the development of its painting and finishing facilities.

Ian Jobling, Sales Manager at Negri Bossi UK, said:

“We are delighted to be working in partnership with TEP and look forward to ramping up production later this year. The new VECTOR 800-tonne has a shot capacity of 8kg and platen sizes of 1550mm x 1400mm.

“The VECTOR 1300-tonne wide platen version boasts an impressive shot capacity of 11kg with a market-leading platen size of 2150mm x 1700mm. Machines are being supplied with Herzog hydraulic shut-off nozzles for processing of structural foam, a specialism of TEP.”

This article was originally published on PlastikMedia.

As energy costs continue to increase more injection moulders are looking at ways to spend less on electricity. Michael Hadfield Managing Director of The Protool Plastics Group is no exception and his latest decision to invest in new machinery was based heavily on saving money over the medium to long term. “Negri Bossi have been a valued supplier to The Protool Plastics Group’s site in Fareham for over 35 years so when I heard that our old pre 2000 NB400 model was starting to show signs of age I reached out to the team for advice. Negri Bossi offered to undertake an energy usage evaluation on the old machine for us followed by a recommendation for a suitable replacement ” said Michael.

Ian Jobling Sales Manager at Negri Bossi said, “When I heard that Michael was considering a replacement for his NB400T machine I was happy to help. I knew that we could reduce his energy usage by recommending a new CANBIO sT 400 Full Servo Drive machine. Following a site visit we measured energy usage on this machine which included a hopper loader and bench lights and found that it was using 44.9kW per hour. At a rate of £0.11 per kWh that equated to a cost of £4.93 per hour or £24,695 based on 5000 hours per year. Using our in-house evaluation software we estimated that we could save approximately 50% if the old machine was replaced with a new CANBIO sT.

The information that Negri Bossi provided following the site visit and energy evaluation played a significant part in Protool’s decision to invest in a new machine. “The savings were clearly significant on paper” said Michael. “It will be interesting to see what the actual results are when the machine is installed and running”.

In addition to potential cost savings Negri Bossi also pointed out that the CANBIO sT 400 comes with dual hydraulic gear pumps allowing for parallel movement of ejectors, cores and mould opening. This in itself results in cycle time reductions of around 10% when utilised.

The new machine was installed in November 2020 and set up to run the same tool that was running previously on the old NB400. Energy measurements were taken while the machine was running in fully automatic operation. The results showed the CANBIO used 18.7Kw per hour to run the same tool at the same cycle time with the same ancillary equipment which equated to a saving of 48%. The trial showed the old NB400 machine was costing £4.93 per hour and the new CANBIO sT was £2.57.

Over 5000 hours the savings were proven to be very significant with the NB400 costing £24,695 compared to £12,850 an annual saving of £11,845.

Michael continues, “Based on the results of the comparison tests the savings are everything we hoped that they would be and we look forward to continued savings during 2021. Adding the 12 months maintenance of the very old NB400 machine to the energy cost savings of the new CANBIO sT it has basically given us a fully funded machine.”