Company visit: PIM International, Vol.3 No. 2 June 2009, pages 31-35, 2080 words

Author: Bernard Williams, Consultant, Shrewsbury, UK

Oechsler AG, based in Ansbach, Mittelfranken/Bavaria, Southern Germany, has long been a leading innovator when it comes to bringing new plastic-based injection moulded products to the market.

The company has now gone a stage further with the successful introduction of a range of CIM parts based on zirconia in the new BMW 7 series introduced early in 2009. Bernard Williams, Consulting Editor of PIM International, recently visited the company and reports on recent innovations.

Introduction

Oechsler AG was founded in Ansbach by Matthias Oechsler in 1864 originally to manufacture buttons from animal bone. The company was awarded a Gold Medal for its growing range of button products at the 1897 World Trade Fair held in Brussels, and it gradually expanded into other moulded products such as polymers when they were introduced in the early part of the 20th Century.

The Oechsler family still has a controlling stake in the company, which has seen rapid growth over the past 20 to 30 years, predominantly in the plastic injection moulding of highly complex, multi-component and assembled automotive and medical products. Sales of €141 million were recorded in 2007 and the company employs around 1400 people in five locations, 1200 of whom work in the three manufacturing facilities based in Germany (at Ansbach, Küps and Weissenburg) with the remainder in recently built plants in China and Romania.

Injection moulded component production

Dr Dietmar Drummer, Head of Technology Management and Senior Vice President of Oechsler AG, explained that Ansbach is very much the technology hub for the 3000 or more moulded components already developed and produced by the company, with a further 100 moulding tools being added each year for new components.

Further sections of this article include:

- Injection moulded bonded magnets
- The move into powder injection moulding
- Oechsler’s tooling and moulding expertise benefits CIM

Figures and Tables:

Fig. 1 Headquarters of Oechsler AG in Ansbach, Southern Germany
Fig. 2 Dr. Dietmar Drummer (left) and Michael Oppermann (right) who have introduced powder injection moulding for new CIM based products at Oechsler AG
Fig. 3 Automated mass production of precision injection moulded plastic components
Fig. 4 Injection moulding shop for plastic components containing a fleet of injection moulding machines
Fig. 5 A Headlamp range adjuster, just one of many complex, multi-component assembled parts in production at Oechsler
Fig. 6 Electromechanical handbrake system used in, for example, VW and Audi cars replaces the conventional handbrake lever
Fig. 7 This ‘global’ General Motors car key integrates, in the upper housing, four different plastic materials in one moulding operation
Fig. 8 Small gear with a polymer bonded magnet
Fig. 9 Rotor with 3 integrated magnetic tracks
Fig. 10 PIM zirconia back cover for the Siemens S68 mobile phone
Fig. 11 PIM zirconia mobile phone back cover with side keys
Fig. 12 PIM zirconia control surrounds used on the BMW 7 Series iDrive
Fig. 13 PIM zirconia controls used on the air conditioning and audio systems consoles
Fig. 14 PIM zirconia component used on the BMW 7 series automatic gear lever
Fig. 15 Zirconia can be powder injection moulded in a variety of colours
Fig. 16 Checking the precision of moulding tools at Oechsler
Fig. 17 Tool assembly for complex moulding tools