Five-axis parts in series

The mould production of Color Metal produces mould inserts in an automated facility with a large pallet storage on five-axis machining centres by Grob. For this purpose, the tools are calibrated by an m&h laser and checked for tool breakage.

Ever greater time pressure and the need to produce as economically as possible have induced the mould production of Color Metal moved in Heitersheim in the Baden region to invest in an automated manufacturing system with two five-axis machining centres by Grob and a large pallet feed by Schuler.

The Color Metal company employs about 85 employees to manufacture injection moulds up to a size of about 10 tons for many application areas, such as medical technology, automotive, household appliances, plumbing and others. In the new automated system, individual pieces, such as mould assemblies and mould inserts, are manufactured in series, so to speak. In this way, downtime can be avoided, and the expensive machines work virtually around the clock as well as on weekends and holidays. Both the Grob G550 and the Grob G350 are equipped with the m&h Laser Tool Setter and probes by m&h.

The m&h probes are known at Color Metal from many years of operational experience. After all, they started a long time ago to replace other brands with m&h probes. For this purpose, m&h offers so-called chameleon models which can be converted by a switch to the communication systems of other manufacturers. This allows existing receiving equipment and control connections of other systems to be used. Also, due to good experiences during repairs, where a loan probe was available within a day, now nearly all other probes have been replaced.