PIM International June 2021

Page 75

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MIMplus Technologies

MIMplus Technologies: How innovation and research is driving developments in NdFeB magnets and sinter-based AM MIMplus Technologies has a proven track record in MIM materials, process and application development. Now, the company is further increasing its market reach and production capability through research-driven material and process developments. As Dr Georg Schlieper explains, the first of the company's two main areas of current innovation is the production of NdFeB hard magnets, using recycled materials, by MIM. The second is in sinter-based Additive Manufacturing, where MIMplus is working closely with Germany's Headmade Materials and Israel's Tritone Technologies on the commercial development of their very distinct production processes.

Although MIMplus Technologies GmbH & Co. KG was only founded in 2019, the company already has more than twenty-five years of experience in the production of MIM components. This is down to the fact MIMplus is the former MIM business unit of the family-owned company OBE Holding GmbH (formerly OBE Ohnmacht & Baumgärtner GmbH & CO. KG), whose speciality is hinges and other components for the eyewear industry, before it was spun off as an independent subsidiary. OBE has existed since 1904 and today has manufacturing facilities in Germany and China that together employ around 500 people. The headquarters of OBE is in Ispringen, a small town not far from Stuttgart, Germany, that is also the home of MIMplus Technologies (Fig. 1). OBE was one of the pioneers of MIM technology in Germany. In the early 1990s, the company recognised the potential of the MIM process for the production of very small, intricately-shaped metal parts for eyewear components and set up its

Vol. 15 No. 2 © 2021 Inovar Communications Ltd

own MIM production facility. Leveraging the many advantages of the MIM process, OBE was able to significantly develop the design of complex and innovative eyewear hinges. Today, MIMplus employs around eighty staff and manufactures more than 25 million MIM components annually. Whilst a proportion of these

components are still supplied to OBE for the production of eyewear frames, the company's most important customers are in the medical technology, consumer goods, automotive, electronics and aviation industries. Peter Georg Specht, Managing Director of MIMplus, told PIM International that the name MIMplus

Fig. 1 The production building (left) and administration (right) of MIMplus in Ispringen, Germany

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