Automation on a small footprint

Jan Oortgiesen makes sure the automation equipment at his sheet metal operations matches current trends: “The batches are getting smaller and smaller. Typical are orders for 25 to 300 items,” says the owner of Goma B.V. in the Netherlands. But automation still pays off, since many jobs involve repeated operations in bending, punching and laser cutting. That makes a fully automated Stopa storage system the heart of manufacturing. It provides storage space for some 400 mild steel, aluminum and stainless steel sheets. more...

Complex parts as success factor

You could call his behavior "courage in crisis." Steffen Albrecht just calls his approach "anticyclical." In January 2009, the founder and CEO of Pretec invested in two new machines, a TruBend 5130 press brake and a TruLaser 5030 2-D laser cutting system. more...

Flexibility thanks to bending robots

In FZL's sheet metal processing, seven of the company's eleven machines are fully automated. For those seven machines, only four operators are needed. The three BendMasters by TRUMPF are all run by a single person per shift. more...

Now even faster

Ingenious sheet metal workers at the Swedish Rotage job shop show how automation can boost productivity. Ingemar Ronger's "Blue Hall" consists of Two TruBend 5130 with Bendmaster, two TruLaser 3030 with LiftMaster Store and SortMaster, TruLaser 5030, two TruPunch 5000 with SheetMaster. more...

Sensing at the edge

Laser light darts over the workpiece before the robot arm lays the panel in the machine. At H. Gewing GmbH, re-measuring components has become a thing of the past. The system can do that on its own: Apart from various TRUMPF laser cutting machines and a few punching machines, Gewing is using two TrumaBend V 230 with BendMaster for automated bending and three TrumaBend V 230. more...