We need the best injection molding technology

Mueller/Tecnoplast in Brazil relies on injection molding machines and turnkey solutions from WITTMANN

In Brazil, the Mueller/Tecnoplast group of companies ranks among the pioneers in plastics injection molding. As a long-standing partner of the country’s well-known major automobile manufacturers, Mueller/Tecnoplast faces the daily challenge to combine first-rate quality with maximum efficiency. The technological means to meet this challenge come from injection molding solution partner WITTMANN.

Two large, black injection-molded parts are what Alexandre Ramos, Director of Mueller/Tecnoplast, presents to us on the factory tour during our visit in São Paulo City. The larger of the two has just come off the clock out band from a MacroPower 650 injection molding machine. They form a glove compartment with its lid, which the Mueller division is producing for the Toyota plant in Sorocaba, just 100 kilometers away.

These two parts are typical examples of the company’s product range. Mueller/Tecnoplast produces parts almost exclusively destined for the automobile industry. These include many large components, such as glove compartments or, for example, fender liners and mudguards. Here, the MacroPower from WITTMANN is the preferred machine model.
As Ramos explains, injection molding of glove boxes and their lids places extremely high demands on precision and surface quality: “These two parts are joined together by vibration welding. To get a good weld seam, their geometries must be perfectly matched.” In this case, “good” does not just mean that the weld seam looks clean, but above all that it lasts for a long time, even when the vehicle achieves a long service life and is subjected to vibrations caused by rough roads.

Perfectly reproducible surfaces
With its extremely accurate servo-hydraulic movements and highly consistent injection processes, the MacroPower 650 makes the most of its strengths in producing these parts. Especially combined with Flowcon plus, the intelligent water flow regula-tor from WITTMANN. This device controls all cooling circuits and detects any disrup-tive factors such as blocked cooling channels or flow quantity fluctuations. Via pro-portional valves, the system then automatically compensates these irregularities during ongoing production, accurately down to the tenth. In this way, the temperature remains evenly distributed inside the mold. The result is a very high consistency in quality. “This task could not be accomplished manually, since variations in tempera-ture control conditions only rarely show an immediate effect,” explains Marcos Cardenal of WITTMANN BATTENFELD do Brasil. “But with this intelligent assistance system, Mueller/Tecnoplast can intervene before scrap is produced and thus save both raw material and energy.”

The high reproducibility of the surfaces is so very important, because these are visi-ble components required to match precisely the look of the dashboards, which are produced elsewhere. “When it comes to color and gloss, we have zero tolerance”, says Ramos.
It was six years ago when Mueller received its first order from Toyota to produce glove compartments. Meanwhile, the processor has become the sole supplier of this interior component for all Toyota models manufactured in Brazil. “We have never had any discussions about quality issues over all these years”, says Ramos. “The glove compartments are really a success story.” One of many – for the corporate history of Mueller/Tecnoplast is closely linked to the development of the automotive industry in Brazil.