In the future, 3- and 5-axis unloading robots from Sepro Robotique (La Roche-sur-Yon / France; www.sepro-group.com) will be included with Milacron's (Cincinnati, Ohio / USA; www.milacron.com) injection moulding machines that are sold in Europe. Recently, both companies made an agreement that expands the one existing since 2010 for the North American market. According to Milacron, the first robots have already been sold to customers in Germany and Portugal.

The US company's injection moulding machines will be equipped with a control system of fully-integrated robots and marketed under Milacron. According to Denis Poelman, managing director of the injection moulding machine group in Europe, the company offers standard linear robots for pick-and-place operations and performance linear robots for high-end applications. Poelman says the robots can handle weights ranging from 3 to 60 kg. The service of machines and robots will be taken over completely by Milacron after an initial support phase by Sepro.

It seems that with the focus on the Milacron brand, the Ferromatik brand name has finally disappeared from the picture, after injection moulding machine production was relocated from Malterdingen / Germany to the Czech Republic last year (see Plasteurope.com of 07.06.2016).

Due to growing demand for automation solutions, Milacron is planning further industrial robot technology platforms with the suppliers Kuka, ABB, Fanuc, Yaskawa and Stäubli.

Sepro has collaborations with a number of other injection moulding machine builders, including Stork Plastics Machinery (Hengelo / The Netherlands; www.storkimm.com), Billion (Bellignat / France; www.billion.fr) and Sumitomo (SHI) Demag Plastics Machinery (Schwaig / Germany; www.dpg.com).