First Technology Seminar “Machining of Hybrid Lightweight Materials”

Knowledge transfer at a high level

Part­ner com­pa­nies organ­ise 1st tech­nol­o­gy seminar

The pio­neer­ing spir­it of the part­ners Reichen­bach­er Hamuel and Huf­schmied Zerspanungssys­teme was not only clear­ly evi­dent at their joint appear­ance at Com­pos­ites Europe in Stuttgart, but also at the first spe­cial­ist sem­i­nar, which they organ­ised togeth­er with Fraun­hofer IPA and Schuko on 22 Novem­ber 2018 in Coburg under the chal­leng­ing head­line “From dri­ving ban to milling ban”.

Around 70 par­tic­i­pants from all over Ger­many had trav­elled to take part in a tech­nol­o­gy sem­i­nar focus­ing on the machin­ing of hybrid light­weight mate­ri­als after a tour of the Reichen­bach­er Hamuel fac­to­ry in the Orangery in Rose­nau Cas­tle Park. It was clear to all par­tic­i­pants that the indus­try will face many new chal­lenges in the future and that only close coop­er­a­tion and the inter­lock­ing of key tech­nolo­gies will lead to suc­cess. Thomas Czwie­long, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Reichen­bach­er Hamuel, put it in a nut­shell in his wel­com­ing speech. “Respon­si­bil­i­ty for the envi­ron­ment and peo­ple is omnipresent. Hybrid mate­ri­als are becom­ing more and more impor­tant and the chal­lenges involved in pro­cess­ing these mate­ri­als can only be over­come if experts coop­er­ate and joint­ly offer process-ori­ent­ed com­plete solutions”.

The guests, who includ­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of well-known com­pa­nies from the Ger­man auto­mo­tive and avi­a­tion sec­tors as well as experts from uni­ver­si­ties and research insti­tutes, were enthu­si­as­tic about the enor­mous trans­fer of knowl­edge at the end of the day-long sem­i­nar. Dur­ing the tour of the plant, the vis­i­tors were con­vinced that com­pre­hen­sive solu­tions are already the order of the day for the major­i­ty of machine projects: Very prac­ti­cal­ly demon­strat­ed on the new Reichen­bach­er TUBE series, on which car­bon milling was shown live, with tools from Huf­schmied and extrac­tion tech­nol­o­gy from Schuko.

The con­tent of the lec­tures cov­ered a wide range, start­ing with light­weight con­struc­tion, through the crit­i­cal view from the med­ical point of view with regard to fine dust pol­lu­tion, to the pre­sen­ta­tion of the influ­ence on this com­po­nent from the point of view of the machine, tool and extrac­tion man­u­fac­tur­ers. Med­ical pro­fes­sor Clau­dia Traidl-Hoff­mann from the TUM Munich made an impres­sive state­ment in her lec­ture “Clean air in the machin­ing envi­ron­ment from the point of view of indus­tri­al med­i­cine” in the direc­tion of the industry’s respon­si­bil­i­ty. She point­ed out that the avail­able long-term results leave no doubt as to how neg­a­tive­ly fine dust par­ti­cles affect human health and that the con­se­quences are hard­ly fore­see­able at present. The data from numer­ous epi­demi­o­log­i­cal stud­ies on the mol­e­c­u­lar mech­a­nisms of envi­ron­ment-human inter­ac­tion is over­whelm­ing, and she addressed these facts unequiv­o­cal­ly at the event and every­one was impressed.

The man­ag­ing direc­tors André Schulte-Süd­hoff from Schuko Absaugan­la­gen and Ralph Huf­schmied from Huf­schmied Zerspanungssys­teme then seam­less­ly addressed this top­ic in their pre­sen­ta­tions and illus­trat­ed how they can con­tribute to bet­ter air qual­i­ty with inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy. It was pre­cise­ly this diver­si­ty of aspects that struck the sem­i­nar par­tic­i­pants pos­i­tive­ly, espe­cial­ly since empha­sis was always placed on con­vey­ing the fact that with the chal­lenges ahead, indi­vid­ual com­pa­nies can no longer do any­thing on their own, even with the best tech­nol­o­gy. Andreas Geb­hardt from Fraun­hofer IPA put this in con­crete terms with the state­ment that cus­tomers are inter­est­ed in a func­tion­ing over­all sys­tem. And this requires effec­tive coop­er­a­tion between the com­pa­nies from the very begin­ning of the process in order to achieve an opti­mal over­all solution.

The head­line “From a dri­ving ban to a milling ban” was the per­fect hook for every­one to get into con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er. This made it pos­si­ble to dis­cuss con­crete top­ics much more pre­cise­ly and pur­pose­ful­ly than would ever be pos­si­ble at large trade fairs. Michael Schmitz, mas­ter mod­el mak­er at the HS Coburg, said: “I will also reg­is­ter for next year’s tech­ni­cal sem­i­nars, because the knowl­edge trans­fer today was enor­mous, very well pre­pared and organised”.

At the con­clud­ing pan­el dis­cus­sion, Georg Han­nig from Scherdel Siment empha­sised that as a mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny, you have to clar­i­fy in advance exact­ly how much swarf and oth­er waste is gen­er­at­ed in the pro­duc­tion process in order to then work out an opti­mal over­all con­cept togeth­er with part­ners. Hein­rich Timm, board mem­ber of CCev, point­ed out that espe­cial­ly in the area of e‑mobility, one can­not do with­out light­weight con­struc­tion and spec­i­fied his crit­i­cism of the, in his opin­ion, incom­pre­hen­si­ble unequal legal lim­it val­ues with regard to fine dust pol­lu­tion of dif­fer­ent habi­tats. His demand: a return to a sen­si­ble approach to lim­it val­ues in order to pre­pare the ground for sus­tain­able solu­tions that do jus­tice to every­one — peo­ple, health and the eco­nom­ic inter­ests of companies.