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All about the latest developments in our company as well as our products and services can be read here.

Faster chamfering, quiet cutting: Construction machinery supplier modernizes prefabrication

Lehnhoff has been relying on a BIBER robot cutting system from ERL for weld seam preparation since 2010. To ensure its competitiveness, the company decided to invest in the next generation of the cutting system. Productivity in cutting was also increased with a gantry cutting system including a sound insulating enclosure, while at the same time creating a user-friendly working environment.

Robot cutting system BIBER

Lehnhoff Hartstahl GmbH, based in Baden-Baden, is an innovative medium-sized company that has developed into one of the market leaders in the sector as a supplier of equipment for hydraulic excavators. The construction machinery supplier has its origins in 1960, when company founder Ernst Günter Lehnhoff started with the regeneration of drive mechanisms. Just six years later, there was a major change in the product range: Lehnhoff began manufacturing backhoes for hydraulic excavators. Over the years, the product range has been continuously expanded. The result is a comprehensive range of tools for all types of excavators on the market, with which Lehnhoff not only offers effective attachments to general civil engineering and road construction, but also serves special sectors such as demolition and recycling, horticulture and landscape architecture as well as quarries and gravel plants.

 

Proven system

For the manufacture of its high-quality products, Lehnhoff relies on state-of-the-art production technologies. For the preparation of weld seams, for example, the company purchased a unique system ten years ago to be able to automatically apply a wide variety of bevel shapes to components - a BIBER robot cutting system from ERL Automation.

What distinguished this system concept at that time was its wide range of possibilities. With the BIBER, all kinds of bevels can be applied to already shape-cut parts - in extreme cases, up to four different bevels on one edge. Single and double bevels can be created just as well as bevels with or without a bridge. By using a special bevel cutting table, sheets can be machined on both the top and the bottom side without having to turn them over. And even today, there is no solution that delivers comparable high-quality cutting results and offers high cutting speeds. CNC cutting machines could partly take over this task with additional chamfering units, but they tie up valuable capacities, usually work too imprecisely and quickly reach their limits with more complex components.

Lehnhoff has grown continuously over the past few years, which is why the amount of chamfering work has also increased significantly. Accordingly, the robot cutting system was put under heavy strain and was increasingly working to full capacity. In order to remain competitive, those responsible at Lehnhoff looked at ways of increasing capacity and productivity. The robot cutting system BIBER has also been continuously developed over the last ten years. For example, the robot's working area has been enlarged, many work processes have been automated and networking options have been implemented, making weld seam preparation with the BIBER easier and more efficient. It was therefore quickly clear that Lehnhoff would continue to rely on the tried and tested system and, in order to be able to benefit fully from the new functions, not only upgrade, but switch completely to the new system generation.

 

Productivity increased

The new profiBIBER has a larger cutting table with a supporting surface of 1.5 x 9.5 m. Unlike before, Lehnhoff can either use this area completely for chamfering components or divide it into two smaller areas by a movable partition wall. The partition wall system enables shuttle operation, where loading and unloading can take place on one side while the robot processes components on the other side of the partition wall. In this way, the user can react flexibly to the bevelling work that has to be done and optimally utilize the system. By reducing non-productive times, productivity could be increased considerably.

There are also some innovations in terms of cutting technology. For plasma bevelling, for example, an even more powerful power source is used. With the new HiFocus 440i neo, cutting lengths of up to 50 mm can be realized. In the area of oxy-fuel technology, the user benefits from automated processes, because the robot no longer has to be started manually once the preheating temperature has been reached; instead, the cutting process starts automatically as soon as the predefined parameters have been reached. The process databases have also been further developed and are now more finely tuned. Data sets are now interpolated in 1-mm and 1-degree steps, which allows even better cutting results to be achieved and a wider range of bevels to be realized with the wearing parts.

Another component that is decisive for the cutting quality is the line laser scanner, which measures the component edges after each cut. Here, too, new technology is used that allows a greater measuring distance and minimizes the risk of collision during position measurement and when cutting certain inner contours. The laser line, which at 160 mm is more than twice as long as before, has not only replaced search cycles but also halved the time required for position measurement. In addition, Lehnhoff benefits from higher accuracy in oxy-fuel cuts due to the greater detection of up to 80 mm depth at the material thickness. After all, the new laser with blue light source is less sensitive to reflections and incidence of light.

A completely new feature is the camera system intelliplace, which automatically determines the component position on the table. This replaces manual measurement and entry of the component position data by the system operator and reduces non-productive time. Especially with regard to a large table occupancy, for example ten components, the time saving is enormous. Another special feature in this context is the possibility of automatically calling up, assigning and nesting the associated component programs from the directory. The operators only have to enter the component data (data matrix code on the component or barcode on the accompanying documents) with a hand scanner beforehand. This also reduces downtimes and, not least, operator errors, because calling up similar or mirror-image component programmes is ruled out.

 

Perfect supplement

Lehnhoff also wanted to implement a more modern cutting system for sheet metal cutting. Until now, a gantry cutting system for underwater plasma cutting was used for this production step. Due to the advanced age of the system, the fact that this process was at the expense of cutting speed and cutting quality and that the system required a lot of maintenance, those responsible at Lehnhoff thought about an alternative. Nevertheless, the company did not want to miss out on the advantages of underwater cutting, which include low noise and dust levels. In the end, Lehnhoff aimed for a solution that would allow components to be cut more precisely and quickly while at the same time reducing noise and dust for the employees.

The construction machinery supplier was convinced by the erlcut-silent gantry cutting system, because it fully meets the requirements. With this system concept, the entire cutting area is located in a sound insulating cabin. The user benefits from the higher cutting speeds and the better cutting quality with dry cutting, while at the same time keeping the noise exposure of the employees as low as possible. A shuttle table system including a belt conveyor and transverse conveyor enables simple and efficient handling.

The central element is a gantry cutting system type e545 with a track width of 4500 mm and a 6 m long track. The machine is equipped with a plasma cutting torch and a HiFocus 440i neo power source, which enable the cutting of sheets up to 40 mm thick. Noise emissions of up to 110 db(A) can occur. Thanks to the sound insulating enclosure, the system operators outside the cabin notice little of this. The sound-insulated cabin reduces noise by up to 30 db(A). In addition, all relevant operating elements are housed in a semi-open sound-insulated control centre. From there, the operating personnel always have a view of both the cutting process and the loading and unloading station outside the cabin. When setting up sheet metal panels, the operators are supported by the erlcut-cam camera system. A camera mounted on the tool transmits a live image to the control system, enabling the edges to be captured quickly, precisely and perpendicularly.

An automatic shuttle table system allows sheets of up to 2000 x 4000 mm to be fed into the working area of the system. Two pallets with cutting grids automatically switch between the cutting area and the loading/unloading station. This allows the finished parts to be unloaded and loaded with new sheet metal during the cutting process. Below the cutting grid is a water basin with a belt conveyor that reliably transports cutting slag and small parts out of the table. The water basin ensures that most of the cutting dusts are bound and that a low extraction rate is sufficient. On the front side of the belt conveyor table, a transverse conveyor takes over the transport into a container covered with a grating. The grating reliably separates slag and small parts and the small parts can be easily removed from the grating. This saves Lehnhoff a time-consuming work step, as the time-consuming manual emptying of the slag trays is no longer necessary.

 

Excellent partnership

With the renewed decision to invest in cutting solutions from ERL Automation, the companies are continuing a successful collaboration of many years. With the perfectly coordinated cutting systems from a single source, Lehnhoff is optimally prepared for future cutting tasks.

Since the end of 2019, both systems have been fully integrated into the production and the conclusion is consistently positive. The optimized system concept of the BIBER robot cutting system has made operation easier and orders can be processed much faster. The improvements in cutting technology have a very positive effect on the cut quality during weld seam preparation. Thanks to erlcut-silent, Lehnhoff also achieves better cutting results in cutting, and in less time than before. Above all, the fact that the high cutting quality can even relieve the existing laser cutting system in the sheet thickness range of 10 to 20 mm is a great advantage for Lehnhoff. Thanks to a converter integrated in the erlcut's control system, this does not require any additional programming effort, as existing NC data can be easily converted.


About us

We are a manufacturer of gantry and robot cutting machines as well as special systems.


ERL Automation GmbH
Siemensstraße 12, 94405 Landau a.d. Isar

+49 9951 - 60 34 66 0
info@erl-cutting.com

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