Over the last few months WITTMANN BATTENFELD has succeeded in winning new customers in many markets with its SmartPower injection molding machines. The appealing design of the SmartPower, its near-silent operation, the highly repeatable process capabilities, wide platens and class-leading compactness are perhaps some of the main factors influencing a purchase. However, once in operation, the bonus of the SmartPower’s extreme energy efficiency performance also becomes an inescapable fact.
In numerous meetings with customers held by Dan Williams, Managing Director of WITTMANN BATTENFELD UK following the installation of SmartPower machines, energy efficiency has come up as a topic of particular significance. The magnitude of actual savings realized on the production floor by comparison to similar machine models has exceeded expectations and surprised many users.
A typical example is White Horse Plastics (WHP) based in Oxfordshire, which recently ordered a SmartPower 60. WHP Managing Director Paul Bobby says that “after labor and raw material costs, energy and utilities present us with the next most significant overhead. I always expect to see some significant improvement when comparing old to new, but these outcomes were far more impressive than could ever have been hoped for. In fact, the greatly reduced running costs from the SmartPower machine were so incredible that it led to us repeating the exercise in order to check our methodology. But when repeated these results were exactly the same. These machines are called SmartPower for a very good reason” says Bobby “and the energy savings achieved are truly world class.”
At Thomas Dudley-owned Rugby Plastics similar experiences have emerged: Dr Steven Pepper has been leading the company drive towards factory efficiencies. In this case a SmartPower 50 injection molding machine was the basis for the energy measurement work. The machine was supplied with servo power and a HiQ quality control package and it also deployed the regenerative KERS braking system so effectively used by the WITTMANN Group.
The SmartPower was compared to a machine that had been supplied in the early 1990’s. Unsurprisingly perhaps the test results were astounding, revealing that the SmartPower injection molding machine was six times more energy efficient and six times less costly to run than the older machine.
Joint WITTMANN BATTENFELD UK Managing Director Tracy Cadman says that “my accounting background and expertise tells me that the low running costs of WITTMANN BATTENFELD designed equipment has to be a primary consideration for our customers in any purchasing decision. Customers are increasingly factoring these numbers into a lifetime of machinery performance – over ten, fifteen, twenty years.”
Tracy also notes that WITTMANN BATTENFELD UK is able to confidently model and forecast the reduced energy cost they will save prospective customers with SmartPower based technology. “Our leading customers in the UK and Ireland are increasingly realizing that low energy production is helping to future proof businesses, not only for cost but also in terms of transparent Industry 4.0 production and securing a low environmental footprint.”
For more information about WITTMANN BATTENFELD please visit: www.wittmann-group.com
