34 n ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATED MANUFACTURING February 2026 www.drivesncontrols.com Injection moulder installs its first robot to satisfy a demanding customer Franz Wolf Kunststoffverarbeitung is a third-generation German family business that specialises in injection-moulding applications. The company, located in Kirchheim, has been in business for more than 50 years, and currently employs around 40 people in production, toolmaking, quality assurance and logistics. Wolf operates around 40 machines with clamping forces from 15 to 130 tonnes, about one-third of which are electric, reducing the company's energy consumption. Its customers come from sectors including automotive, electronics, hydraulics and communications. One of Wolf’s production lines manufactures large numbers of small precision plastic parts for steering angle sensors. The parts are moulded on an Arburg Allrounder 40-tonne injection-moulding machine with an eight-cavity mould. The entire shot is removed by a linear handling system and then separated from the sprue. Each group of four parts is positioned mirrorinverted opposite the sprue. Previously, the parts were placed on a conveyor belt by a handling system, and then moved unsorted into a box. This system was fully commissioned and operational when the customer surprised Wolf by saying that it wanted the parts to be placed individually into their own packaging. The reason for the request was that the subsequent processing is usually automated, requiring the parts to be delivered in a way suitable for automation. But, with an output of around 1,400 parts per hour, this additional task was impossible to handle economically by hand. The parts needed to be sorted correctly into trays measuring 600 x 400mm, with 112 parts in each tray. The trays then had to be stacked on Euro pallets and covered with a lid. If done by hand, this would have required two people performing a monotonous task almost continuously. While handling systems are fast and costeffective for removing parts from an injection-moulding machine, they are not suitable for placing individual parts into trays. The existing linear handling system was therefore not viable for packaging the parts into trays. In addition, a way had to be found to stack and unstack the trays for the packaging process. Wolf turned to EGS Automation, a German company which has been supplying robotbased automation systems since 1999. Since 2021, it has been a subsidiary of Dunkermotoren – one of Wolf’s customers. Stacker EGS was able to offer a potential answer based on its standard palletising system. The core of this is the Sumo Ecoplex2 tray stacker, which can handle stacks of 600 x 400mm trays up to 0.8m high. The trays can be fed and removed via conveyor belts which hold four stacks, offering autonomy for around 12 hours of operation. The individual parts are handled by a Yaskawa Motoman GP7 articulated robot with a reach of almost 1m and a payload of 7kg. A question remained about how to transfer the parts from the injectionmoulding machine. “We were concerned about potential issues at the interface during coordination and later operation,” recalls Franz Wolf’s technical director, Moritz Kaiser. Coordinating interfaces coordination and monitoring workspaces are daily tasks for EGS. It is accustomed to adapting to different communications protocols. And, in robotics, When a customer made a last-minute change to its requirements, a German injection-moulding contractor realised that it could no longer rely on the manual sorting of parts. It therefore commissioned its first robot to help it handle 1,400 parts per hour. It is now planning to install more. Transferring a part from Franz Wolf’s removal handling system to the robot
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