Engel partners with Fill GmbH for composites technology

Injection molding machinery maker Engel Holding GmbH is partnering with fibre preform machinery group Fill to develop turnkey solutions for the industrial manufacturing of fibre-reinforced plastic components.

“The aim of our partnership is to meet the demands of the market even more effectively and drive the industrialisation of composite processes forward even faster,” Franz Füreder, vice president of Engel Austria’s automotive business unit, said in an Engel news release. “We are delighted that in Fill we have found a partner whose technologies are also the world’s best and who, like Engel, prioritises research and development.”

Both companies are headquartered in Austria.

Components made from fibre-reinforced plastics (FRP) play a key role in automotive lightweight construction, Engel said, and the biggest challenge at present is to develop economic processes for the mass production of innovative composite parts. “Interdisciplinary competence is absolutely essential if an FRP project is to be successful,”Füreder said. “It’s only when the materials, designing and process steps are all coordinated with each other perfectly that the productivity and cost efficiency levels required in the automotive industry can be achieved.”

Engel has been collaborating with partner companies, universities and other research institutes in the field of automotive lightweight construction for several years now, the news release continued, and in 2012 set up its own technology centre for lightweight composites at its large-scale machine factory in St. Valentin, Austria.