As a family run foundry with a tradition of serving as a partner to leading automotive gearbox manufacturers, Ernst & Landerer has realised that achieving increasingly faster speeds and keeping processes economical, while delivering the same accuracy and quality, calls for constant advancements.
Customers today demand ready to install cast products and, as a result, mechanical production was added to the casting process. Since then, it has become the company’s largest area of business, running a two-shift system with 22 Haas machining centres. Between 30 and 40% of the parts produced are supplied to gearbox manufacturers – high precision components with j6 tolerances, h6 for diameter boring and 1/100mm variances in rectangularity and parallelism.
Accurate measuring is essential, and on a visit to Blum-Novotest the casting specialists submitted their first order for tool and workpiece measurement probes. Six months later, the number of probes was increased. More new machining centres were added over time, including a horizontal machining centre with a pallet changer and a cell for six pallets. This new machining centre was also equipped with measuring technology from Blum-Novotest. Now, every machining centre that produces high precision parts is fitted with Blum’s Z-Nano tool probe and a TC52 probe, with more than 25 systems now in use.
As a result, all gearbox parts produced with strict tolerances are now measured quickly and reliably using the probes. From a product range made up of high precision gearbox parts with around 20,000 manufactured every year, fewer than ten workpieces were returned with complaints in 2010.
Blum Novotest
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