ENGEL demonstrates advantages of Liquidmetal

For two days in mid–January, Liquidmetal was the focus of the ENGEL Deutschland Technologieforum Stuttgart. In this event, ENGEL, together with its system partners Liquidmetal Technologies and Materion Corporation, presented the potential of the new materials and their efficient metal processing to visitors for the first time.
 
More than 200 guests attended the event and many participants showed interest as they already had concrete questions and product ideas that they brought to the event. The first applications are now going into project planning.

"The number of registrations far exceeded our expectations," according to Claus Wilde, Managing Director at ENGEL Deutschland and head of the Technologieforum Stuttgart, who opened the event.

The forum, which was originally planned to last just one day, was extended to two days due to the unexpected high number of registrants. The guests came not only from the territory served by the subsidiary, but from all regions of Germany, as well as from Austria, Switzerland, France, Great Britain and Sweden. Besides plastics processors, many metal processors also took the opportunity to get to know the new technology and ENGEL. While the injection molding machines, robots and system solutions from ENGEL had previously been solely for processing polymeric material, the machine manufacturer is now also opening new vistas of quality and efficiency for metal processing.

The name Liquidmetal stands for a group of zirconium-based alloys that have been developed by Liquidmetal Technologies of Rancho Santa Margarita, California. As the exclusive engineering partner, ENGEL is the only supplier in the world offering machinery and system solutions for the injection molding of these materials. A third partner is Materion Corporation, the material producer and distributor based in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. During the Forum event, the three partners jointly presented the new materials, injection moulding for processing them efficiently, and the potential they have for applications.

As a sample component, small flags with a very delicate and complex three-dimensional structure were produced at the demonstration. The live demonstration showed the efficiency of the method and the high precision of the injection molding machine, as well as the excellent surface quality of the products.