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I think in five years there will have been an absolute revolution
in the gear cutting industry.
I think many of the tools and machine tools
that currently dominate the industry
will no longer be in mass production.
Most workshops can apply this new technology
because it has nothing to do with the age of your machines.
Customers that have 40- to 60-year-old machines
have increased productivity with 200 to 500%
with these new gear tools.
It was a revolution but that's all in the past now.
This technology is well underway here with us,
but it hasn't fully caught on yet in Germany.
When using high-speed steel tools,
there is a large amount of extra work
related to the handling of the tools.
This means you need a larger quantity of tool stock.
The resharpening of each tool includes transport, decoating,
resharpening, deburring, edge treatment, measuring of the tool.
Then you need to coat the tool and transport it back to the end user.
At the end user, the operator must check the diameter of the tool
before he starts machining.
Many customers have been frustrated
that they are using essentially the same solutions
they were using years if not decades ago.
So they have been unable to pursue
the sort of improvements in productivity
that have been enjoyed by other industries.
So they see these new solutions as enabling step changes
in their productivity and capability.
One of the elements of the new solutions
that our customers are particularly excited about
is it helps them grow their business
without being constrained by the shortage of skilled workers.
We no longer need customers with the niche skill set
for the traditional hobbing, shaping, gashing machines.
By applying the new indexable gear tools
you can reduce the number of tools needed
and there is no handling outside the workshop.
You can clean the tool with pressurised air,
change the inserts,
put it back in the machine and go on hobbing.
In my opinion, an important aspect is also the environmental question.
When work is performed without the use of cutting fluid,
the whole issue of cutting fluid disposal no longer arises
and a lot of money is then saved
through not having to dispose of this material
and the work place is, of course, cleaner
than when operators have to work using oil.
When I joined this company,
I saw that there were a lot of pending orders.
And we were unable to meet the delivery requirements
of the customer.
I saw the entire process.
I found that gear hobbing was one of the major bottlenecks.
So then I thought of introducing this gear milling concept
and try out my idea -
whether I can increase the cutting speed
and get more jobs in a shift.
And you wouldn't believe that productivity increased
in some gears up to 2.5 times,
in some gears it was 3 times
and even in some gears we could go up to 3.5 times.
The benefits of using indexable inserts -
a much higher level of productivity.
When indexable inserts are used in comparison to HSS tools,
productivity is up to 50, 60, 70% higher.
In terms of precision, the gashing tools, the hobbing tools
based on inserted carbide, offer essentially the same accuracy
as the high-speed steel tools which preceeded them
but with much higher levels of productivity.
At the other end of the spectrum,
the InvoMill tool offers exceptional accuracy
and only the most demanding grinding applications
require an alternative to the InvoMill.
As we always believe, and it is one of our core values,
to have continuous improvement
so we would now like to take it forward
and go for an indexable hob.
In the future they'll expect the machine to be very agile
and be capable of milling gears, hobbing gears, shaping gears,
gashing gears, grinding gears and inspecting the gears
all in the same machine.