When it was built 20 years ago, by KraussMaffei and our partner Diefenbacher, the lab machine Alpha 1 was the world's biggest lab machine for injection moulding. Developed for our customer General Electric Plastics in the USA and installed in the company's Pittsfield test lab, the Alpha 1 produced large-area parts and was used to test multicomponent techniques. The machine was huge, with a clamp force of 5,000 tonnes (50,000 kN). There were two large injection units and a sliding table that was 8000 mm long and 2500 mm wide. General Electric used the Alpha to experiment with different technologies that are widely used in injection moulding today. These included compression and flow moulding, 2-component injection moulding, integral foam injection moulding, gas-assisted moulding and In-Mould Coating.