MacroPower: Made for high-quality fittings

01.07.2020

In 2018, Prince Kunststof Infra with production plant in Tholen in The Netherlands, not far from the Belgian border, installed a WITTMANN BATTENFELD MacroPower 1000/19000 injection molding machine with B8 control and an additional 5100 injection unit. The machine was equipped with a WITTMANN W843 robot as the
respective automation solution and the aim was to produce large moldings for the gas and water sectors.

 
Part of the staff of Prince Kunststof Infra in Tholen, Netherlands in front of the company’s WITTMANN BATTENFELD MacroPower injection molding machine: M. Henning, Process Operator, W. Heijboer, R&D Engineer, and P. de Boer, Senior Technical Advisor (from left to right).

The Prince company was founded more than 30 years ago by H. Prince, producing plastic fittings for the gas and water industry. The aim was to replace the cast iron fittings from the Seventies that were of heavy weight, and with the new plastic products, corrosion of the fittings could be prevented.

In the early years, when molding plastic fittings, Prince had to deal with two main problems. First of all, there were 150 different variations of fitting in the marketplace. Creating so many mold tools to match would have been a very large scale investment.

Furthermore, the molding technology then wasn’t yet as technically developed as it is now. Also, the Dutch institution that was responsible for the adjudication of the respective seals of quality did not yet approve the plasticsbased parts then.

However, Mr. Prince persisted: He invested in the needed molds, and he got a molding specialist on board. Together, they devised a plastics injection technology that prevented the development of flowlines appearing on the molded products. Such flowlines would have led to fittings with weak points

With regard to the processed material, Prince decided to use PE instead of the cheaper PVC. For this special intended purpose, PVC has proven to be too fragile. In 1985, Prince started production, having elegantly solved the tricky problem of the mold costs: All the fittings were resolved into several parts to be molded. This approach finally made it possible to produce more than 100 different fittings by using just a few mold tools. The PE-based parts could be variably combined and welded together afterwards, thus attaining the highly diverse nature of finished parts.

Prince uses WITTMANN Group equipment

Today, Prince Kunststof Infra successfully delivers standard and non-standard fittings to the gas, water, and biogas industry. The company also produces waterproof cable boxes for the local market and is expanding this activity into the entire European market. Prince now is managed by Kathleen Metz who bought the company in 2013.

Some examples of fittings, produced at Prince Kunststof Infra.

Before the MacroPower 1000 was delivered in 2018, Prince used three injection molding machines with clamping forces ranging from 200 to 650 tons. The WITTMANN BATTENFELD MacroPower with a clamping force of 1,000 tons has now replaced all these three injection molding machines.

With the machine’s two injection units, Prince now can handle shot weights ranging from 1 kg (using the 5100 injection unit) up to 10 kg (applying the 19000 injection unit). The entire process is automated using a WITTMANN W843 robot equipped with a Z-axis of a length of six meters. Currently, Prince is expanding its production facility, and the company is also investing in even more molding capacity.