BBG ventures into new markets with innovative composite press

Machinery manufacturer BBG GmbH & Co. KG (Mindelheim, Germany) announced March 21 it is venturing into new markets with an innovative composite press. In March, BBG delivered the first model of the series to a company from the railway industry.

The customer is a supplier of China Railway, a state-owned Chinese railway company, and also delivers products to companies from the aviation and commercial vehicle industries. They plan to use the system, which is an extension of the composite spray molding (CSM) process,  for producing lightweight interior cladding on the basis of the "paper honeycomb" process. In the process, two glass-fiber mats sprayed on with PUR are pressed against an intermediate paper honeycomb layer and then cured in the presence of heat. The finished component is characterized by a low weight and a high level of stability and bending stiffness.

The composite press, which, as all other BBG systems, was entirely produced at the company's headquarters in the Unterallgäu region in the South of Germany, comes with two mold mounting plates, which are 2,000 mm in width and 1,400 mm in depth and can be swiveled at the same time. The swing angle of the upper and lower plates is 40° each at a parallel stroke of 500 mm. The drying cycle takes ≤ 38 s. You may use molds with a total weight of up to 11,000 kg, the press and locking force amounts to 4,000 kN.

The hydraulic unit with a capacity of 2,500 l is mounted on a platform above the press in order to save space. Since the rear side of the press affords easy access, a robot can be used to feed material into the press mold from the rear. The finished component is subsequently removed from the front.