Wickert Maschinenbau is very satisfied with the progress of DKT 2024. The world-leading manufacturer of presses and press systems for elastomer processing, according to its own information, greatly benefits from the thematic focus of the performance show. “Compared to the JEC and K-Messe, the number of trade fair visitors is significantly lower,” explains Wickert sales engineer Mathias Kiefer, “but the quality of the conversations is much higher. Many visitors come to us because they have a specific concern and are explicitly looking for a specialist in rubber processing.”
About three-quarters of the interested parties came from German-speaking countries, the rest from France, Great Britain, the Benelux countries, and China.
Wickert welcomes the new three-year cycle of DKT. This frequency has also proven itself at the K-Messe, corresponding to the need of suppliers and customers for personal encounters. Kiefer’s conclusion: “DKT 2024 was very good, we are happy to return in 2027.”
Visitors came purposefully and well-prepared
Most visitors inquired specifically about new presses at Wickert’s stand – often in combination with vacuum chambers –, technologies, control innovations, and possibilities for automating systems. The well-prepared inquiries often revolved around upcoming projects.
Besides new machines, retrofitting was also a topic, especially when existing presses need to be adjusted and optimized due to a changed product range and different tools. Conversations also focused on machine relocations within the context of production site shifts and increasingly on service packages for systems.
“The topic of ‘automation’ is repeatedly addressed, but it is usually only worthwhile in rubber processing for press systems where large batch sizes are produced and few tool changes occur,” explains Kiefer. When this is the case, Wickert offers its customers numerous options for process automation.
Focus at DKT: Customized press systems
Wickert prepared for comprehensive individual consultations with stand visitors and focused its trade fair presence on customized press systems for the efficient production of high-quality elastomer molded parts.
Customers can choose from manufacturing processes such as Compression Moulding (CM), Transfer Moulding (TM), and Injection Transfer Moulding (ITM). Outstanding features of the presses include a very homogeneous temperature distribution on the heating plate surface and extremely precise parallelism. Moreover, Wickert has decades of experience with vacuum elastomer processing systems.
