Arburg’s Gestica Control System Wins Red Dot Award
On 9 July 2018, the design world gathered in Essen, Germany, for the presentation of the internationally renowned “Red Dot Award” for design. This year more than 6,300 products from 59 countries were submitted. These included the Gestica control system from Arburg, whose look and feel won over the 39-strong Red Dot panel of experts.
Following on from the freeformer in 2014, this is the second Arburg product to win this prestigious design award. This is evidence of both Arburg’s innovative strength and of the great importance that the machine manufacturer attaches to product design.
The Red Dot “Product Design” award, the origins of which date back to 1955, is bestowed on the best products in 48 categories each year. This year’s awards went not only to products from premium brands Ferrari and Apple in their respective categories, but also to a product from Arburg: The Gestica control system received the “Red Dot Award 2018” in the “Industrial equipment, machinery and automation” category.
“The user-friendly design of the control system is inspired by the look and feel of smart mobile devices while retaining an independent interpretation,” was the assessment of the international panel of judges. Important criteria include the degree of innovation, as well as functionality, ergonomics and self-explanatory quality.
Gestica combines aesthetics, functionality and ergonomics
The judges tested the functionality of the Gestica control system using a simulator to obtain an impression of its benefits. One highlight is the “Easyslider” control element, which can be used to control movements simply and precisely during set-up of the injection moulding machine and display these via colour-variable LED technology. Acceleration and deceleration can be controlled by swiping along a bar at the edge of the screen. Furthermore, Arburg’s pioneering control system is equipped with a 16:9 high-resolution Full HD screen featuring industry-standard multi-touch technology. As ergonomics play an important role in development together with functionality, the pivoting, height-adjustable operating panel is anatomically inclined.
Successful partnership
Product design has played a very important role at Arburg for decades, as Managing Partner with responsibility for Marketing, Juliane Hehl, explains: “Our aim is underscore our outstanding technology with an appropriately outstanding design. For this purpose, Arburg works closely with designer Jürgen R. Schmid, owner of the Design Tech design studio in Ammerbuch. Schmid explains that when it comes to Arburg products, his self-imposed challenge is always to successfully marry the look and functionality of the machines and control system. As well as the award-winning design of the Gestica control system, this successful cooperation has already resulted in the largest Arburg injection moulding machine Allrounder 1120 H, which obtained an iF award in March 2018, and the freeformer additive manufacturing system, which won a Red Dot Award in 2014.
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