Consistently fault-free components with a reduction on production costs

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Synventive Molding Solutions GmbH

HEYCO GmbH & Co. KG

Global strategic partnerships are important

Globalisation means increasingly focusing on a few but reliable partnerships in common production concepts. Heyco manufactures its plastic components worldwide, but all are made according to the “Directing Instructions” from the Development Centre in Tittling, Bavaria. To ensure reliably high quality with trouble-free production, a structured and consistent standardisation of the system components is required.

Until a few years ago, the mould and die manufacturers commissioned by Heyco were largely free to choose the most important system component “hot runner technology”. As the traditional thinking of minimising unit costs determined the decisions, the supposedly cheapest supplier was often chosen. However, maintenance, repair, spare parts provision and the total service effort for a large number of different hot runner systems increased the subsequent costs immensely.

Hot runner nozzles

Fitting hot runner systems into increasingly complex moulds

As responsible head of the field of tool management, Alexander Ritzinger's thinking is profit-oriented and thus focused on process costs. Consequently, he focused on only three hot runner manufacturers. Today, Ritzinger sees the hot runner manufacturer Synventive from Bensheim in Hesse as an important strategic partner.

He explains this from a point of conceptual thinking, which Heyco and Synventive both pursue. Ritzinger says: “When we buy moulds in China, the Synventive hot runner systems installed there are of the same standardised quality as if we were purchasing the mould and the hot runner system in Germany. When we then use the tool at our factory in the USA, the service, maintenance, and spare parts supply are as if they were done right on our doorstep. Synventive's communication is always unambiguous worldwide, and the technology components and service are identical everywhere.”

Controlled melt flow for demanding car parts

Ritzinger clarifies the importance of the strategic partnership with Synventive with an example of a currently produced part – the windshield cowl for the BMW X2, developed by Heyco. This two-component part must fulfill three main functions.

In its primary function, air-water management, this component separates impurities such as dirt, water or ice from the required intake air for the interior. Drainage devices direct the liquid components away from the air intake devices and filter systems before the interior is ventilated in an air-conditioned manner.

Another important function is passive pedestrian impact protection. In the event of a collision with a person, the component must break at precisely calculated points to absorb impact energy and keep the risk of injury as low as possible.

Since the cowl is a visible component on the outside of the vehicle, the surface quality must also be flawless and of optically high-quality at all points.

The two-component BMW X2 cowl is injection-moulded in cascade with a 2 x 7 drop valve gate system from Synventive in a 1/1 cavity mould. The main component weighs over 600 g PP and the secondary component just under 140 g TPS.

During the development phase, it turned out that a defect-free surface quality in standard sequential cascade injection moulding could not be guaranteed for this technically demanding component. The occurring surface defects were a consequence of unwanted, short-term flow front accelerations in the melt due to the melt expansion at the cascaded nozzle gates. This resulted in pressure transition marks on the surface structure.

After consultation with its hot runner partner Synventive, Heyco decided to update the hot runner system with the Synventive-Synflow technology, which allows for an active and controlled melt flow into the cavity.

Guide

How to choose the correct hot runner supplier

With Synflow, Heyco was able to control the flow front velocity of the melt via a reduced opening speed of the valve pin. With this technology, error-free cowl components could be manufactured.

Ritzinger states: “In the past, we also produced faultless components using cascaded injection moulding. Today, however, the components are becoming increasingly complex, and it is more difficult to produce flawless surfaces, especially in the immediate area of the gating points. When we use a technology such as Synventive's Synflow, we have a convenient system that allows us to reach the optimum operating point very quickly. This saves us a lot of time because we reach the production process rapidly and once set up, the system then delivers us consistently fault-free components. If there is a batch change, we can comfortably use the values of the flow front control determined beforehand to quickly reach the optimum operating point again. The additional investment costs are quickly recouped through a significant reduction in process costs. The advantages have convinced us to make the fundamental decision to equip all our production's hot runner systems used for cascade injection moulding with this flow-front control technology.”

Gallery

Gallery with 5 images

More information on Hot Runner Systems & Components on our ETMM Website.

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