Ebel & Rickert GmbH

After focussing on stamping dies and building a reputation as experts in that field, Ebel & Rickert GmbH have recently expanded the business to include the design and manufacture of injection moulds and aluminium pressure-casting tools. Changing the company ethos has allowed Ebel & Rickert to expand with enlarged company premises, updated machinery and double working shifts and triple the number of staff.

Ralf Rickert, Managing Director, explains that diversity has ensured they maintain a full order book. "There is only one way to handle large volume contracts with such short lead times - flexibility and efficiency. We are running Makino wire EDM machines and five multi-tool change Deckel-Maho CNC machines with Heidenhain controllers. All are running independently and the core of our tool production."

In addition to progressive dies, Ebel & Rickert now designs injection moulding tools and aluminium pressure-casting tools as well as the appropriate deburring tools. Working mainly for the automotive industry, the tools vary greatly with the largest tool measuring 2.5 meters long and 0.8 meters wide weighing approximately 2.6 tonnes. Ebel & Rickert are also supplying tools for the electrical, aeronautical, sanitary and furniture industry, in particular with extrusion coating of electronic components.

Ebel & Rickert have been using VISI since 2002 and currently use VISI Modelling, VISI Analysis, VISI Mould and VISI Progress for all their design needs as well as VISI Machining and Automatic Feature Recognition (AFR) for all machine programming. Focussing on a recent project for the Audi A4, Ralf Rickert is quick to emphasise how the progressive tool was designed with ease using VISI. "Each VISI product is optimised for their respective application. VISI Progress provides the tools to develop the blank, design the strip in 3D and calculate the pressing forces for each station, even with complex free-form surface models." The flexibility of the software however was best highlighted with the design of a deburring tool for a two cavity aluminium pressure-casting. The tool has two saws as well as four hydraulic slides and is used to remove the sprue, cut the holes, remove the outer burrs, separate the parts and keep the sealing surfaces planar.

VISI Progress and VISI Mould include parameterised libraries of standard items from the common manufacturers such as Meusburger, Strack and Hasco. This allows the designers at Ebel & Rickert to perform changes directly on the tool and automatically adapt standard elements such as guide columns, screws, bushes and ejectors. VISI Machining is used to take the processing information directly from the 3D models and automatically calculates the cycles for centring, drilling, grinding, thread cutting as well as profile and pocket milling. To facilitate faster and more accurate machining of tools with increasingly complex geometry, Ebel & Rickert are actively looking at 5 axis machining.

Overall, Managing Directors, Frank Ebel and Ralf Rickert are very happy with the use of VISI in their company - The software is a foundation pillar for the continued growth of the company.

Ebel & Rickert GmbH
Web: www.ferr-wzb.de/

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