It is planned at Agritechnica 2013 that Oerlikon Graziano will unveil its new fast track prototyping and small batch manufacturing facility to its global customer base. This is the summation of two years' work and millions of Euro of capital expenditure.
The concept may appear simple - to group all the necessary machine tools and processes together under one roof for the manufacture of cylindrical gearing, synchronizers, drive subassemblies. However, it may be easy, but turning this simple concept into reality is extremely capital intensive, and much planning is required to successfully reduce the manufacturing lead time in relation to all critical drivers. In support of this Oerlikon Graziano has gained commitment from the steel mills to have immediately available a vast array of all standard material grades/sizes in bar and billet stock, standardizing on production tooling to the point it allows them to have pre-machined blanks with suppliers just waiting to be configured to the customers' bespoke design.
In gear manufacture, precision dictates accuracy therefore fixturing on all machines tools is of the very latest in quick set up modular design, and all first off and intermediate inspection is performed on dedicated metrology equipment.
Heat treatment will be provided by way of a priority service from Oerlikon Graziano’s world renowned Cervere Plant, which is one of Europe’s largest independent heat treatment facilities and is equipped with one of the best metallurgical laboratories in Italy.
Currently Oerlikon Graziano have a team of twenty talented engineers just putting the final touches to the capability of the new equipment, installed in readiness for the first customer order.
