Talking about clamping force
On producing moulded plastic parts
Thomas Pirzer on controlling machines:
“We’re also responsible for monitoring quality. It may be that the parameters alter. Now we’re changing shifts, and I’m telling him what happened on my shift so he can carry on and knows what’s up.”
Technical moulded parts of plastic have to perform a lot of functions in the end-product. Plastic granules are melted down and injected under high pressure using injection moulds. Birner Kunststofftechnik GmbH has at its disposal more than 140 injection moulds with a clamping force of between 25 and 1,500 tonnes.
One example: when producing transparent covers for the dashboards of cars, the tool is held together with a pressure of 650 tonnes. This immense power counteracts the lifting force of the plastic material. The technical term for the size of the machine needed is the clamping force.
Even the smallest faults are detected
Cornelia Mößmer on her job:
“We make the frame, and the rings are supplied. My function is to test whether all the parts are assembled. On this job, optical perfection is the most important thing, as with our cockpits we’re in the driver’s direct line of vision. We can’t have any faults on the surface areas the driver sees.”
“The project’s interesting because of the complexity of the part. I have to inspect quite a lot of parts, the frame, the transparent covers, the ring. It’s a lot of fun, and I like being part of a team anyway. Here I’m now mainly responsible for final checking. But we all know everything about all the others’ jobs, so if one of us is ill you can take over her work.”
Transparent covers for the cockpit
Packed antistatically box by box
Doris Mikysek spreads a sheet of tissue paper over the top layer of transparent covers in the box. The shiny side of the paper is now lying directly on the sensitive product. Before that, every cover has been carefully inspected, first against a black background to see if there are any white spots, and then for black spots against a white background. Doris Mikysek deionizes the surface of the plastic covers under a stream of air so that no dust will settle.
