Kurtz goes Automation

Increasing personnel costs and increasing price pressure are putting companies from the producing trade all over the world in dire straits. After all, it′s a question of costs per machined part, which - unlike expensive manual handling - can be reduced by automation. At the bottom line, automated solutions for flexible use lead to higher process security and reproducibility, reduce costs and increase output and quality!

This trend also has effects on mechanical engineering at Kurtz GmbH. Precisely in the foam machine area, customers are more frequently asking not only for automatic part processing machines, but also for additional systems taking on tasks like handling and packaging in an automated way. For this, existing machines are partly retrofitted or extended, but also new systems and lines completely installed. 

More productivity, more quality

In a current project with an Asian customer from the automotive supply branch who produces products from EPP with foamed-in inserts with Kurtz automatic moulding machines, the manual insertion process ofthe various metal inserts is to be automated. The automation pursues the objective of doubling productivity and also improving quality. Kurtz has developed a solution for this, in which a robot takes the inserts from a magazine by means of grippers and positions them at the correct places in the mould of the automatic machine. Thanks to a sophisticated gripper system, it is possible for all the inserts in one cycle to be inserted by the robot in only one step.

Handling in combination with quality check and sorting of parts produced by moulding machines is the task of a further Kurtz automation project which is currently in the design phase. For this, a completely automatic line, in which the moulded parts pass through the individual stations for the quality check on conveyor belts before being sorted at the end of the system, is being developed.

Permanently extending the range of products

To support our customers as a competent partner in the complex change from manual to automated sequences, we are working at high pressure on permanently extending our range of products in the area of automatic handling, quality check, sorting and packaging.