Precision, productivity and profit: NUMtransfer at GUK
There are many factors, which combine to make working profitably in the tough business of the automobile industry possible. An up-to-date, reliable machine and operation that is specially designed for the application, such as NUMtransfer, is part of extremely important user and process knowledge.
Even a UFO landing could hardly be more dramatic: the rotary machine by Précitrame Machines SA is a futuristic sculpture in the production halls at Griesser & Kunzmann GmbH & Co.KG (GUK) in Wellendingen, near Rottweil. The company was founded in 1948 by Karl Griesser and Anton Kunz-mann and today employs over 200 in the areas of folding machines and rotary technology. Today, Anton Kunz-mann’s successors run the business intent on sound, continuous and stable growth.
Every year the rotary parts section produces around 38 million work pieces and make up about one third of the overall company revenue. Investing in Précitrame rotary machines with NUMtransfer enables GUK to meet the requirements of the customers with high-quality products, very low fault rates, on time and with reasonable prices and still generate a realistic level of profit. Reaching this goal required the close cooperation of GUK with the expertise of Précitrame and NUM to combine all the skills in the application.
The work pieces may be small but they have a lot of requirements. Just getting the right tension for the spool carrier, manufactured for the automobile industry, presented a big challenge. The technology is very sophisticated for high-precision drilling, milling and alternate interior and exterior turning. A lot of time was invested in optimising the individual machining phases. Mr. Kurt Bettinger, section head at GUK, explains: “We were able to gradually reduce the machining time at each work station by half. We only change the type of work piece every two or three months but thanks to the versatility of NUMtransfer we can now save a lot of time here as well.”
Loading, turning and unloading the work pieces is carried out by robots controlled by a custom made system. The goal is zero defect tolerance and this is the reason why there is a specially designed robot at the side of each machine measuring every part and checking its precision.
In the automotive industry network, GUK has to depend on the high reliability of its machines. Vincenzo Bonavoglia, head of sales at Précitrame Machines AG, gives NUM top marks: “There is plenty of computing capacity to handle complex procedures efficiently. Of particular importance for GUK and for us, is the low operating temperature and the high temperature stability of the CNC and drives, which must be extremely reliable.”
(May 2007)