Güdel (www.gudel.com), a manufacturer of high-performance gantry robot systems and linear motion products, adheres to a policy of in-house manufacturing to ensure that it meets meticulous standards at all stages of production.

Because the demand for its gantry robots and other products continues to grow year on year, the company has again made a significant investment in new machine tools for its Langenthal (Switzerland) facility, increasing manufacturing capacity in a number of areas.

In surface grinding, a pro-duction bottleneck has been eliminated and processing times have been significantly
reduced.

Meanwhile, the introduction of new continuous processing technology in the rack-hardening shop has modernised this part of the production facility and further increased capacity, while a new gear-grinding machine has removed yet another bottleneck and increased capacity in preparation for anticipated higher volumes.

The wide range of linear-motion and gantry-robot products manufactured by Güdel means that diverse machine tools are used to produce them.

To minimise the number of separate parts needed, the company decided to manufacture single sections of beam up to 14m long; because standard machine tools that accommodate this length are generally too large in the Y and Z axes for Güdel’s requirements, the company decided to design and build its own solution — known internally as the LFM.

The first of these unique machines was created some years ago, and Güdel has gone on to build another four.

Two are located at the company’s headquarters in Langenthal, and the latest two have been installed at other Güdel sites; they are making components for local use on a two-shift system at plants in Ann Arbor (in the USA) and Lingang (near Shanghai in China).

Each machine has a Reiden milling head that can be used in a horizontal or vertical position, allowing parts to be machined on five sides; the maximum spindle speed is 7,000rev/min, and the maximum torque is 750Nm.

The machines comfortably meet the ±0.02mm tolerance required for the company’s TMF linear axes.