K-Fair 2019
Kurtz Particle Foam Machines in Hall 13 crowded with visitors
The K 2019 was a huge success for Kurtz Ersa. Contrary to all discussions about the use of plastics, we were able to inspire our customers with product innovations and live production. The booth of Kurtz GmbH was well attended from the beginning and during the whole fair. This resulted in numerous concrete inquiries – now we have to get the orders and convert them into real projects.
With the revolutionary RF technology, Kurtz presented an absolute world novelty that caused a sensation in the plastics industry. Under the motto “CIRCULAR FOAM – THE FUTURE”, the steamless processing technology impressed the trade visitors with daily live demonstrations at a packed exhibition stand, which often led to in-depth discussions. Further exhibits and stations also impressed the international trade visitors, leaving plenty of room for customer questions and detailed advice from the stand team.
Industrial IoT for particle foam processing
As a digital highlight, Kurtz presented its POWerBoard for the machine world of particle foam processing for the first time. Only presented to the foundry customers of Kurtz GmbH at GIFA in June, the K visitors were also convinced of the new Industrial IoT software solution within a very short time. With the POWerBoard, the overall system effectiveness can be increased many times over after previous data collection and subsequent evaluation.
As a secure, globally available cloud solution, the POWerBoard offers many advantages, especially for remote maintenance and remote monitoring on the service side. It also offers a customer portal, downtime tracking options, a ticket system for service requests and modules for artificial intelligence such as self-directed learning and correlation detection. With the POWerBoard, Kurtz GmbH also paves the way for particle foam processing customers to achieve greater efficiency and productivity. Kurtz was one of the few exhibitors to present an IoT solution at K 2019, once again underlining its leading role as an innovation driver in the industry.
Market leader created in EPP processing
With the PRO FOAMER, Kurtz Particle Foam Machines have for decades set the industry standard for automatic moulding machines for EPP processing up to 5 bar. The WAVE FOAMER with its impressive removal station was just as popular in Düsseldorf as the WAVE FOAMER. Two-density foaming, skinning of moulded parts and skin moulding – the PRO FOAMER realises almost everything with ease. At the same time, it takes into account current requirements for reduced energy consumption and the shortest cycle times. The optimised assistance system Kurtz Insert/Eject Control 4.0 carries out an optical insertion and removal control and thus supports the high availability of the line. Another top highlight was the completely new “KurtzSoft” control and visualisation software, which permits an extremely flexible machine process, is open to all conceivable extensions and offers simplified role-based user guidance. The Kurtz systems thus become industry 4.0-capable, are prepared for predictive maintenance and can communicate via OPC-UA.
PRE FOAMER 4300: New pre-expander series
The third machine exhibited at the Kurtz booth was the PRE FOAMER 4300. The pre-expander system is considered the most innovative on the market and stands for fast and reliable pre-processing of EPS beads. The pre-expander system also incorporates state-of-the-art technology such as an integrated silo control system, SCL database connection, an octabin station with sensors for calculating the residual batches and the precise weighing device with proportional technology (0.0005 % accuracy) with mechanical self-calibration function. Harald Sommer, Head of the Particle Foam Machines Profit Center, draws a positive conclusion from the trade fair as a whole: “As a traditional machine manufacturer, we are proud to gradually expand our portfolio to include complete solution concepts in order to be able to offer our customers an all-embracing care package. By focusing one of our lines of business on automation, Kurtz will in future be in an increasingly better position to offer the increasing demand for handling systems and automation concepts in-house. This will enable Kurtz customers to obtain sustainably competitive overall solutions from a single source.”