Fakuma 2024

Join us at Fakuma 2024, the premier international trade fair for plastics processing and manufacturing. See our new customer success stories and the advanced capabilities of our Digital Mold solution.

Date: October 15th - 19th 2024

Location: Friedrichshafen, Germany

Booth Location: B5-5412

15 – 19 October 2024 in Friedrichshafen, Germany

Meet our team at Fakuma at booth B5-5412

Join us at Fakuma 2024, the premier international trade fair for plastics processing and manufacturing. At the world’s leading trade event for industrial plastics processing, almost 1,500 exhibitors present their international range of products and services. Together with our long-standing collaboration partner Schwarz Plastic Solutions, we will present new customer success stories and insights into the advanced capabilities of our Digital Mold solution.

Process Control Technology

sensXPERT Digital Mold moves beyond pressure and temperature sensors and optimize your production processes by analyzing material behavior in-mold and in real time. The adaptive process control sensXPERT ensures optimal performance and guaranteed quality in your plastics manufacturing.

Dielectric sensors installed in the mold

sensXPERT’s material characterization sensors are engineered to maintain continuous, direct contact with raw materials inside the mold. These sensors monitor both temperature and material behavior throughout the processing cycle. By capturing this real-time data, sensXPERT can accurately calculate and predict key parameters, including the degree of cure or crystallization, glass transition temperature, and other crucial thermal and mechanical properties of the material in the mold.

Edge Device as the control unit

The sensXPERT Edge Device connects with the sensXPERT material characterization sensors within the mold – including any other third-party sensors. During production, it utilizes advanced machine learning models to predict material behavior as the product forms within the mold. This allows for dynamic, adaptive process control, automatically adjusting to any unforeseen changes, such as material aging, shrinkage, ambient temperature, or humidity, ensuring optimal production conditions.

Cloud Service

At its core, the Cloud Service securely validates and stores all process data—both dielectric and machine-related—through a REST API. This enables a comprehensive overview of various processes and multiple machines, even those spread across different factories or countries, all visualized through a series of dashboards. The quality dashboard, specifically, highlights any parameter variations, helping operators quickly pinpoint the root causes of production errors.

Improving part quality for recycled polymers

What does AVIDENS stand for?

Avidens is based on bringing together various competencies with the aim of improving the processing of recycled plastics in technical components. By pooling knowledge from material, machine data and process parameters and using modern data processing technologies, Avidens can help as an external partner in the following areas: Transparency in the manufacturing process: knowing instead of guessing, compensation of fluctuations and efficiency optimization as well as error tracing, real-time anomaly detection during the spraying process, problem solutions for the industry along the value chain, from material qualification to process control.

Who is behind AVIDENS?

Avidens is a partnership of experts in materials science, production and process engineering, as well as sensor technology and data processing. The combined specific knowledge and equipment enables a broad “modular toolbox” for various problems in the processing industry relating to the use of recycled plastics. The consortium consists of the sensor and AI company sensXPERT, the specialists for plastics engineering and processing Schwarz Plastics Solutions, the market leader for material and laboratory analytics NETZSCH Analyzing & Testing and the precision mould maker Precupa, which specializes in tools with integrated sensor technology.

Our team at Fakuma

Send an email to info@sensxpert.com to schedule your personal meeting with our team at Fakuma at booth B5-5412!

Dr. Alexander Chaloupka

Only a few people in the world share his level of composite knowledge. Dr. Alexander Chaloupka is a polymer expert at heart. After studying physics, he started his career at the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology in Augsburg at the department of thermophysical & chemical analysis and rheology. Moving to the Analyzing & Testing Business of the NETZSCH Group he continued his professional journey. With 10+ years of experience in Research & Development, Sales and General Management, he founded sensXPERT in 2021, where he is running NETZSCH’s first Corporate Venture as CTO.

Arne Büttner

Arne Büttner joined the NETZSCH Process Intelligence GmbH team as a Sales Engineer in August 2023. With a degree in industrial engineering from the Technical University of Kaiserslautern and more than 10 years of experience in the plastics and fibre composite industry, he is your competent contact for the optimization of your production.

Dominik Riescher

Dominik Riescher graduated in 2017 with a Bachelor of Engineering in International Business & Technology with a focus on electrical engineering. He gained extensive professional experience as a Sales Engineer in the Automation industry.

Dr. Nicholas Ecke

Since October 2022, Dr. Nicholas Ecke has joined the NETZSCH Process Intelligence GmbH team around Dr. Alexander Chaloupka. The application engineer studied process and medical engineering at the Technical University of Munich and was a chief engineer at the Chair of Composite Materials at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern. In 2021, he completed his doctorate in engineering with his dissertation, which was awarded the Oechsler Prize. The thesis dealt with methods and approaches for developing and designing tribological components made of plastics. As a sensXPERT, Dr. Nicholas Ecke takes care of the smooth integration of the intelligent sensor technology sensXPERT Digital Mold in the production processes of customers worldwide.

Conference Talk in German language

AVIDENS: Assured component quality with plastic recyclate thanks to in-mold sensor technology and AI

Wednesday, 16 October 2024 at 1:10 PM in Room Berlin

From 2025, new minimum recycling quotas for technical plastic components will come into force as part of the European Green Deal in order to promote the use of recycled materials. However, this poses considerable challenges, as the increased demand for post-consumer recyclates is expected to result in significant fluctuations in quality. Processors and OEMs need to ensure product quality despite varying material properties. Current injection volume and pressure adjustments offer limited visibility into the mold or part, resulting in high scrap rates and inefficiencies due to a lack of process transparency.

This presentation will highlight opportunities to improve part quality when using recycled materials, particularly through the use of live sensor data from inside the part during the injection molding process combined with artificial intelligence. These technologies enable more precise processing, early defect detection and optimized production processes – and thus consistently high component quality.

Speaker: Dr. Alexander Chaloupka