11/29/2013
German precast concrete manufacturers are upgrading
The construction industry in Germany is on the up: experts expect that as many as 240,000 housing units will be completed in 2015, 100,000 more than in 2010. With concrete still being one of the most important materials also in the construction of residential housing, many precast concrete manufacturers are currently preparing for future challenges and upgrading their plants to meet demands. And they are using the expertise of Weckenmann Anlagentechnik specialists, as the following examples Show.
At the brick and precast concrete manufacturer August Lücking GmbH & Co. KG, Warburg/Paderborn, 40 shuttering pallets are currently refurbished. And this is carried out while the plant is in operation. The pallets are transported by truck in lots of four from the factory to the Weckenmann site in Dormettingen. There the steel panels are sandblasted to rid them of grooves, dents and other marks. The completely sanded and newly painted pallets are then transported back to the manufacturer’s plant. The result: the quality of the products are again as those produced in a new plant. The company wants to continue to optimise and modernise its production facilities in the near future – in cooperation with Weckenmann.
To reduce the number of disruptions in production and the number of complaints, the decision-making team at Ludwig Schierer GmbH in Cham has decided to phase out their current MRP-device (Storage, cleaning and plotting device) along with the electrical control system. It was replaced with a new MRPÖ-device (Storage, cleaning, plotting and oiling device) with automatic control. You can now run five operations on a single pallet position: the collection of the bulkhead, the cleaning, plotting and oiling of the pallet as well as setting the bulkhead in question. In addition, a new pallet centring device was added to the MRPÖ-station – with the objective to achieve more accurate pallet positioning and so improve the quality of the precast concrete parts in terms of dimensional stability. Weckenmann has also been commissioned with further modernisation projects at Schierer.
The shuttering robot in the double-wall/floor-slab circulation system at the Bedburg plant of Andernacher Bimswerk GmbH was overhauled. It was fitted with a new gripper, which allows the use of formwork systems with integrated switchable magnets. The result: by upgrading to the new gripper technology, the cycle time is reduced since the shutters can be placed quicker and more accurately.
The circulation system for floor slabs, which the company Gebrüder Kaltenbach GmbH & Co. KG in the Black Forest uses for its production, was supplemented by an offline pallet position with stands and cross-lifting trucks upstream from the concreting station. This means the company can now take pallets needing intensive formwork and reinforcement work out of the circulation cycle and process these offline without time pressure. The result is efficient material flow, which is also not disrupted when time-intensive manual work has to be done.
There are several reasons why the four companies have chosen Weckenmann as cooperation partner. One is that the plant specialist never stops to invest in the development of its machine technology, which is clearly evident in the long service life of its products. This is supported by a good price-performance ratio and commendable after-sales service. Of key importance is in particular the professional advice, the reliability, the quality and the extremely satisfactory execution of customer projects, where customer wishes and improvement suggestion are incorporated seamlessly and flexibly. This is the result of cooperation that sometimes goes back many years.
