HEYCO’s strategic partnership with Synventive

Today, the company focuses on the business areas of "Forged Components" and "Technical Plastic Products". Carl Steinmann GmbH, a HEYCO subsidiary, completed the field of activities with "IML In-Mold-Labeling", "Quality Tools" and the field of plastics processing.

In 2017, the company had over 1,000 employees working at six international locations with sales of approximately 140 million Euro.

Production and Development Centre HEYCO-WERK SÜD/Tittling

The HEYCO-WERK SÜD is an important pulse generator of the HEYCO Group. In addition to the development and production of drop forged components, the threads for the future-oriented production of technical plastic products come together here.

With a strategic view into the future, HEYCO has made a name for itself as a specialist for the development and production of windshield/water cowls, liquid and expansion tanks, air intake systems, and system components for interior air conditioning for the world's leading automobile manufacturers. These plastic components are also in compelling demand in the growing field of electro-mobility.

"We are a creative and innovative strategy and development partner for our OEM customers," says Alexander Ritzinger, Head of Tool Management Plastics Technology.

In his function as a human interface between development and production, Ritzinger is involved in the development of new plastic components at an early stage, ensuring the actual feasibility of the development engineers' ideas.

"In some cases, we are only given a building volume in the engine compartment and the functions that a component is to fulfill. From this "black box" we then develop the functional component with all the checks and test criteria that we have available in our test field.

Even in this development phase, the very highest engineering performance is required; we have to set the course right at the beginning of our thinking process to be able to produce a fault-free component later in series production," says Ritzinger.

Alexander Ritzinger, Head of Tool Management Plastics Technolog

Before a component concept goes into the first production phase as a prototype, HEYCO carries out extensive tests and simulation runs.

For example, quality assurance standards include mold flow, warpage, FEM structure analysis, tool temperature calculations and fiber distribution in the component. Prototypes are fully examined in their functionality in bursting pressure and heat chambers, as well as in complex long-term tests before a series production release is given.

HEYCO currently operates almost 100 injection moulding machines with clamping forces between
40 t and 1,700 t, which are used for 1, 2 and 3-component injection moulding.

„Strategic Partnerships are Important to Us“

Globalization also means increasingly focusing on a few but reliable partnerships in common production concepts.

HEYCO manufactures its plastic components worldwide, but all are made according to the "Directing Instructions" from the Development Center in Tittling, Bavaria. To ensure reliably high quality with trouble-free production, a structured and consistent standardization of the system components is required.

Until a few years ago, the mould and die manufacturers commissioned by HEYCO were largely free to choose the most important system component "hot runner technology".

As the traditional thinking of minimizing unit costs determined the decisions the supposed cheapest supplier was often chosen. However, maintenance, repair, spare parts provision and the total service effort for a large number of different hot runner systems increased the subsequent costs immensely.

As responsible head of the entire tool management, Alexander Ritzinger's thinking is profit-oriented and thus focused on the entire process costs.

Consequently, he focused on only three hot runner manufacturers. Today Ritzinger sees the hot runner manufacturer Synventive from Bensheim in Hesse as an important strategic partner.

He explains this from common conceptual thinking, which HEYCO and Synventive pursue equally.

Ritzinger says: „When we buy moulds in China, the Synventive hot runner systems installed there are of the same standardized quality as if we were purchasing the mould and the hot runner system in Germany. When we then use the tool in our factory in the USA, the service, maintenance, and spare parts supply are as if they were done right on our doorstep. Synventive's communication is always unambiguous worldwide, and the technology components and service are identical everywhere.“

Ritzinger clarifies the importance of the strategic partnership with Synventive with an example of a currently produced part - the windshield cowl for the BMW X2 developed by HEYCO.

This 2-component part must fulfill three main functions.

In its primary function, air-water management, this component separates impurities such as dirt, water, or ice from the required intake air for the interior. Drainage devices direct the liquid components away from the air intake devices and filter systems before the interior is ventilated in an air-conditioned manner.

Another important function is passive pedestrian impact protection. In the event of a collision with a person, the component must break at precisely calculated points to absorb impact energy and keep the risk of injury as low as possible.   

Since the cowl is a visible component on the outside of the vehicle, the surface quality must also be flawless and optically high-quality at all points.

The 2-component BMW X2 cowl is injection moulded in cascade with a 2 x 7 drop valve gate system from Synventive in a 1/1 cavity mould. The main component weighs over 600 g PP and the secondary component just under 140 g TPS.

During the development phase, it turned out that a defect-free surface quality in standard sequential cascade injection moulding could not be guaranteed for this technically-demanding component. The occurring surface defects were a consequence of unwanted, short-term flow front accelerations in the melt due to the melt expansion at the cascaded nozzle gates. This resulted in pressure transition marks in the surface structure.

After consultation with its hot runner partner Synventive, HEYCO decided to update the hot runner system with the Synventive-synflow^®-technology, which allows for an active and controlled melt flow into the cavity.

With synflow^® HEYCO was able to control the flow front velocity of the melt via a reduced opening speed of the valve pin. With this technology, error-free cowl components could be manufactured.

Ritzinger states: „In the past, we also produced faultless components using cascaded injection moulding. Today, however, the components are becoming increasingly complex, and it is more difficult to produce flawless surfaces, especially in the immediate area of the gating points.  When we use a technology such as Synventive's synflow^®, we have a convenient system that allows us to reach the optimum operating point very quickly. This saves us a lot of time because we reach the production process rapidly and once set up, the system then delivers us consistently fault-free components.

If there is a batch change, we can comfortably use the values of the flow front control determined beforehand to quickly reach the optimum operating point again. The additional investment costs are quickly recouped through a significant reduction in process costs.                                                                                               

The advantages have convinced us to make the fundamental decision to equip all hot runner systems in our production that we use for cascade injection moulding with such a flow-front control technology".

About Synventive

Synventive is a business of Barnes Group Inc.‘s (NYSE: B) Molding Solutions strategic business unit, and is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of hot runner systems and components for injection molded plastic parts.  Since the 1970’s, Synventive has served thousands of customers in the automotive, electronic, medical, consumer, industrial and packaging markets.

Synventive has manufacturing facilities in North America, Europe and Asia, each with its own research and development, manufacturing and design departments. North America is served by the company’s Peabody, Massachusetts site. Europe is served by the company’s facility in Bensheim, Germany, while Asia is served from Suzhou, People’s Republic of China. Additionally, the company has sales and service representatives in 26 countries. For more information, please visit www.synventive.com. 

About Barnes Group Inc.

Barnes Group Inc. (NYSE: B) is a global provider of highly engineered products, differentiated industrial technologies, and innovative solutions, serving a wide range of end markets and customers. Its specialized products and services are used in far-reaching applications including aerospace, transportation, manufacturing, healthcare, and packaging. Barnes Group’s skilled and dedicated employees around the globe are committed to the highest performance standards and achieving consistent, sustainable profitable growth. For more information, please visit www.BGInc.com.