exlabesa group commissions SMS group to supply two light-metal extrusion presses

exlabesa’s plant in Doncaster, UK, will be upgraded as a result of this investment. The new 35 MN extrusion press will replace the existing 20 MN extrusion press. The new press will be used primarily to ex­trude profiles for automotive, architectural, and industrial applications from aluminum billets with a diameter of ten inches (254 millimeters) and a maximum length of 1,400 millimeters.

The second, equally powerful 35 MN extrusion press will expand the exlabesa group’s production capacity at its Minden works in Germany. In this way the extrusion press works will be able to respond more quickly and more flexibly to the growing demand for aluminum profiles and continue to offer a consistently high level of product quality to its customers in the automotive, mechanical engineering, construction, electrical engineering, furniture, and retail sectors.

Both presses are equipped with an ecoDraulic system. This system, with its intelligent, automatic start-stop control function, switches off all hydraulic pumps that are not required during the extrusion process. The use of ecoDraulic enables average energy savings of ten percent compared to modern presses without this system. As a result, the new presses at exlabesa group meet the requirements of the ecoplants label, which is awarded to particularly energy-efficient SMS group machinery.

Another feature is the newly developed self-adjusting, moving discard shear. The shear automatically compensates for vertical tolerances in the tool stack. What’s more, it can be used to improve the quality of the profile: after shearing the shear moves a few millimeters away from the die, so when the shear is moved up there is less danger of the aluminum being pulled out of the die pre-chamber. This in turn lowers the risk of air inclusions in the extruded profile.

Commissioning of the extrusion press in Doncaster is planned for the beginning of 2019. The extrusion press in Minden is scheduled to extrude its first billet in the last quarter of 2019.