A second version of the "Euromap 77" digital interface for injection moulding machines is now available free of charge. All major injection moulding machine builders in the European organisation Euromap (Frankfurt / Germany; www.euromap.org) were involved in the development of the interface under the Plastics and Rubber Machinery sector within German industry association VDMA (KuG, Frankfurt; https://kug.vdma.org). Euromap 77 is intended to provide a standardised information model for data exchange between injection moulding machines and the Manufacturing Execution System (MES).

At present, plastics processors often face the problem that machines from different manufacturers cannot be connected to each other via the host computer or the MES. In the next step, several injection moulding machine manufacturers and MES providers will implement and test the interface before the final version is released at the beginning of 2018.

"Transparency is very important to us at this point, in order to achieve a broad acceptance among machine manufacturers, software providers and ultimately the end users," says Harald Weber, head of the technical Euromap working groups.