Confectionery toolmakers acquire a taste for precision

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K&S uses certified suppliers in Schleswig-Holstein and further afield to manufacture its mould rollers from stainless steel or plastic. The company also has its own tool making operation. “Sometimes we have to respond extremely quickly and incorporate very complex forms and shapes in some of the rollers. We prefer to do this in-house,” Maskow says.

Pharmaceutical products with narrow margins

This is also true for some mould rollers used by pharmaceutical companies. “In this case, the volume of each individual product must be manufactured to a precision of 0.01 mml, as an incorrect dose can completely change the effect of the medication. This is also compounded by the fact that these companies use materials with prices of up to 150 €/g. Even a small volume error would be very expensive when considering the many thousands of units manufactured.”

This is the reason that Jörg Maskow and Tammo Bettex – his production manager – place high demands on their machine tools used for mould making. “We carried out various comparison tests back in 2011, and machining centres from Romi, based in Groß-Gerauer, Germany, equipped with Sinumerik CNCs from Siemens turned out some very positive results. The first milling centre – a D 800 – lived up to our expectations, so that we acquired a further three machines from Romi located in our Bad Schwartau facility," Bettex says.

The last machine purchased two years ago was a four-axis D 1500 milling centre, equipped with a Sinumerik 828D CNC. Weighing about 13 tonnes, it can easily handle large machining forces without oscillations. The machine table has a surface area of 1700 mm x 750 mm, and can handle weights of up to 1.8 tonnes.

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