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There is plenty to catch the eye—or stop you in your tracks—at the Milacron booth this week. “We wanted to go big this year at the show,” says Mike Sansoucy, v.p. of injection molding sales for the Americas. How big? For one thing, there’s a 2250-ton model of the new Cincinnati line of two-platen presses—the largest tonnage injection machine ever run at an NPE, Milacron states.

It will be molding an ATV side/by-side dashboard. Not big enough for you? Then you’re welcome to gape at the platen for a 6600-ton “beast” being built for 20/20 Custom Molded Plastics in Holiday City, Ohio. (If they brought the whole machine, there’d be little room for anything else.) There’s also the biggest all-electric Roboshot press ever offered in the Americas—a 500-tonner (450 metric tons).

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Milacron is also “going big” in the scope of its exhibit: from injection molding (four different machine lines represented) blow molding, and extrusion to hot runners, tooling components, and aftermarket supplies—every one of these 911������ areas showing new and enhanced products and services. More than enough to fill 18,700 ft² in Booth W2703.

There’s something else to catch the eye, too: Experience “augmented reality” with “smart glasses” that allow you—or a Milacron service technician—to “walk through” the innards of a machine or navigate the control system as if an expert technician were leaning over your shoulder.

To Michael Ellis, director of marketing and communications, the augmented-reality demo perfectly sums up two key themes of Milacron’s exhibit: “Service and Technology.” He explains, “We have had a new vision for the company in the last year—to lead transformation of the delivery of service in plastics equipment.”

Milacron’s definition of service, he adds, “is to help optimize uptime for our customers.” One thrust of that effort is enhancing connectivity of its machines, including remote monitoring and troubleshooting analysis, for which augmented reality is one tool. It’s all part of the Internet of Things or Industry 4.0 trend, which the company calls Milacron M-Powered.

“We’ve also spent a lot of time on our aftermarket products,” Ellis notes. “We’ve increased stock levels in the U.S. to guarantee that spare parts are in stock and ready for same-day shipment, if needed. This is across many of our products and brands, including injection and Mold-Masters. We’re also adding head count to our service team—more feet on the ground. And at DME, we are focused on speed—getting products to customers faster, as well as offering them products that can speed their production, like our new TruCool products and services related to conformal mold cooling, and there’s our e-STORE, which is foundational for DME and has been enhanced with a number of new products unveiled at the show.”

Ellis and his colleague, Michael Crawford, corporate communications manager, can’t resist noting a couple of other attention-getters at their booth. First, Milacron will be serving pineapple segments from its Klear Cans in celebration of the first commercial application of this co-injected barrier container, based on Kortec hot-runner technology. And second, members of the Kortec co-injection team have encouraged molders to come visit and bring products, or ideas for products, that could possibly take advantage of multi-layer co-injection technology.