Driven by the electrification of vehicles, with the increasing adoption of lightweight and larger automotive parts, the digitalization of mobility, and the constant search for more sustainable solutions, it will keep shaping Bühler’s agenda in 2024. The Swiss technology group, together with customers, partners, and academia, has been driving innovation in die casting for almost 100 years, and will present its cutting-edge solutions and extensive range of services at the 23rd edition of Euroguss, the international die-casting trade fair. The exhibition takes place in Nuremberg, Germany, from January 16-18, 2024.
Bühler’s Die Casting business has been playing a key role in developing various solutions for aluminum and magnesium die casting for the automotive industry and other sectors, such as the household and white goods as well as telecommunication infrastructure. Catering to the specific needs of customers while pushing innovation forward has been at the center of the company's work over the last decades. Bühler offers die-casting equipment for various needs and applications with locking forces ranging from 2,600 to 92,000 kilonewtons (kN) with an extensive and innovative portfolio of solutions.
“We are in the middle of a big transformation and keep our focus on supporting our customers to adapt to new market requirements,” says Cornel Mendler, Managing Director Die Casting at Bühler Group. “From a single machine to a fully integrated die-casting cell, we build customized solutions for a broad range of organizations, from small to medium and large foundries worldwide. Every die-casting system is engineered to meet the customers’ precise production needs.”
Bühler’s portfolio goes from the Evolution series, the die-casting solution to produce aluminum and magnesium parts with locking forces of 2,600 to 9,000 kN, to the Carat series, a two-platen machine with die locking forces of 10,500 to 92,000 kN, designed for die casting large and complex parts, such as structural components. With about 900 machines in operation, Bühler’s Carat series is one of the most successful solutions on the market and is bringing megacasting production to the next level.
More recently, Bühler’s Die Casting team has revised and improved the Ecoline series and developed the upgraded Ecoline DS, a cold-chamber die-casting machine series offering locking forces from 3,400 to 9,000 kN for high-quality aluminum and magnesium parts production. The new Ecoline DS is primarily designed for the automotive industry, but other sectors will also benefit from the updated series, such as the household and white goods industry.
Taking care with Total Care
Relying on continuous high performance and ensuring maximum profitability throughout the lifetime of its equipment is one of the utmost priorities of every production company. For that, it is fundamental to have a clear plan of inspections and maintenance service. With Total Care, Bühler supports its customers with individual service packages to keep uptime at the best possible performance level. With offers ranging from basic inspection of the main machine functions to process optimization to achieve shorter cycle times at high quality, Total Care is tailored precisely to the customers’ needs. The inspection and maintenance services can be supplemented with state-of-the-art digital services for further production optimization, analysis, and reporting.
“We understand that to sustain and increase customer success, it is necessary to have an integrated approach of the whole asset life cycle of our solutions. By joining the customers’ journey side by side, we can make much more impact and evolve together,” says Marco Tobler, Director Global Product Management & Marketing at Bühler.
Minimizing downtime
Downtime Analysis helps customers to effectively keep or increase uptime. It is a comprehensive analysis tool of production events and provides root cause reporting from each die-casting cell. With this service, it is possible to determine the cause of interruption – whether it is due to a machine failure, human error, or a defective peripheral device. Thanks to the structured visualization of the data, production downtimes can be compared with their causes and production can be continuously improved.
The Bühler Insights Die Casting Dashboard displays real-time data adapted to the needs of the customer. With digital charts, graphs and curves, the user can choose the key performance indicators that are most relevant to the operation, giving operators, managers, and maintenance engineers the information they need to improve the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). The Die Casting Dashboard also offers condition monitoring with real-time alerts.
Performance Report, another service provided by the die-casting team, goes one step further and provides customers with a complete overview of the key data related to the equipment's performance on a monthly basis. This service enables the continuous improvement of equipment performance as it gives customers the possibility to compare data from previous months, evaluate the efficiency of multiple machines, and much more.
myBühler: quick, reliable, and convenient
The digital customer experience is also supported by the myBühler portal, which gives customers a complete overview of their hardware. With a single point of access, they can view documents such as manuals and spare parts catalogues, and directly retrieve price and material information to create quotations and orders of spare parts for their machines.
Building a sustainable future
Businesses play a fundamental role in reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, which has been one of the main causes of climate change. By mapping and measuring key sustainability metrics such as CO2e emissions for customer sites and products, Bühler supports the customers in getting the insights and the means to drive significant environmental improvements.
With Bühler’s Environmental Impact Services, companies can quantify and understand the environmental footprint of their operations and products, certify, and report key metrics to stakeholders and build a climate transition plan to reduce environmental footprint. The service is available to small, medium, and large companies and covers site and product assessments. With this measurement tool, Bühler offers its more than 160 years of experience and knowledge of the industry and provides tangible solutions to reduce customers’ footprints.
“Many companies are striving to reduce their carbon emissions and have set themselves specific targets. As we support more companies to hit their emission targets, our process engineers can identify optimization potential in manufacturing to increase efficiency and sustainability at the same time,” says Stefan Prockl, Project Manager Sustainability at Bühler.
The benefits of remanufacturing
Another way of contributing to sustainability is integrating a circular economy approach to production. This means creating a more circular approach to using materials by remanufacturing old machines. In the Bühler competence centers in Brescia (Italy), Wuxi (China), and Holland, Michigan (US), die-casting machines can be given a new lease of life. With partial or entire machine remanufacturing, customers can not only save on costs, but also keep material loss to a minimum while ensuring the circularity of materials. At the same time, the productivity of the machine can be ensured for many years to come. By introducing state-of-the-art control systems, customers are equipped with the latest features and ready for the digital age.
