Perfect Clamping for Lighting Technology

As a sys­tem sup­pli­er for the light­ing and house­hold appli­ance indus­tries based in Ger­many, BJB oper­ates glob­al­ly in the mar­kets for light fix­ture man­u­fac­tur­ing, house­hold appli­ance light­ing and automa­tion. Its sub­sidiary BJB Proce­sa in Lliçà de Vall, Spain, is respon­si­ble for man­u­fac­tur­ing small­er molds and tools, among oth­er things. Here, near Barcelona, they’ve been work­ing with REGO-FIX powR­grip tool­hold­ers for years. 

It all began in Arns­berg, Ger­many, where the BJB head­quar­ters are locat­ed. BJB has been man­u­fac­tur­ing light­ing tech­nol­o­gy since 1867. The Arns­berg com­pa­ny ini­tial­ly man­u­fac­tured entire petro­le­um lamps, before focus­ing on acces­so­ry parts. As elec­tric­i­ty became more and more wide­spread, BJB grad­u­al­ly devel­oped elec­tric “Bridges to Light”: ini­tial­ly light bulb bases and then – as a result of stan­dard­iza­tion – the cor­re­spond­ing lamp sock­ets. First it was incan­des­cent lamps and then lat­er flu­o­res­cent, halo­gen and a vari­ety of dis­charge lamps. LED lights rep­re­sent­ed anoth­er tech­ni­cal rev­o­lu­tion at the turn of the cen­tu­ry, their forms and low heat dis­si­pa­tion enabling all-new con­cepts and designs in gen­er­al light­ing. Once again, the mar­kets – and with them BJB – were forced to rethink their strate­gies, ulti­mate­ly devel­op­ing tech­ni­cal solu­tions for con­nect­ing and secur­ing cir­cuit boards and COB mod­ules. BJB’s LED mod­ules and acces­so­ry kits now enable a vari­ety of OEMs to man­u­fac­ture indi­vid­ual solu­tions using elec­tri­cal, mechan­i­cal, and opti­cal com­po­nents. 500 mil­lion tech­ni­cal prod­ucts for light and light­ing are thus pro­duced in a large ver­ti­cal range of man­u­fac­ture every year: from the ini­tial idea to the fin­ished prod­uct, the com­pa­ny cov­ers the entire val­ue chain. As the pri­ma­ry process, pro­duc­tion encom­pass­es plas­tic injec­tion mold­ing includ­ing tool man­u­fac­tur­ing, met­al work­ing, and assem­bly through to cir­cuit board pro­duc­tion with auto­mat­ic feed, screen print­er, reflow oven, and inspec­tion technology.

Based in Lliçà de Vall, BJB Proce­sa was ini­tial­ly found­ed as a ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice loca­tion in 1977, but quick­ly devel­oped into the pro­duc­tion site for tools and molds. Proce­sa then went on to oper­ate exclu­sive­ly as a sup­pli­er for the Ger­man par­ent com­pa­ny for 20 years. For some time now, the 25 employ­ees have also been accept­ing orders from third par­ties and, in addi­tion to pro­duc­ing tools and molds, also man­u­fac­ture devices and car­ry out repairs. The subsidiary’s pri­ma­ry mar­kets are now Spain, Por­tu­gal, and North Africa.

BJB Proce­sa car­ries out its machin­ing with three five-axis milling machines. When it comes to this and oth­er tech­nolo­gies such as erod­ing, the tool man­u­fac­tur­er usu­al­ly invests in Ger­man or Swiss prod­ucts, just recent­ly acquir­ing an erod­ing machine by Agie Charmilles. With these pref­er­ences, they work with Inger­soll for wire erod­ing and with JUNG and HAUSER for flat and jig grind­ing. The work­piece mate­ri­als pri­mar­i­ly used on these machines are hard­ened and unhard­ened 1.2379 for most appli­ca­tions and unhard­ened 1.2842 cold-work tool steel for reduced require­ments, com­ple­ment­ed by 1.2312 for larg­er molds and 1.1730 for plates. Com­po­nents such as die plates and rods are fre­quent­ly made from car­bide, with weights up to 1,000 kg. Every­thing with machin­ing tol­er­ances of up to ten microm­e­ters is no prob­lem for BJB Proce­sa. But because not all com­peti­tors can boast the same, sep­a­rat­ing the wheat from the chaff, there’s a mar­ket for new appli­ca­tions for the tool and mold man­u­fac­tur­er. The fact that they can dis­tin­guish them­selves from the com­pe­ti­tion when it comes to strin­gent tol­er­ance ranges and tap into the mar­ket is due in large part to their use of REGO-FIX powR­grip toolholders.

BJB Procesa’s con­tact for REGO-FIX prod­ucts is the Ger­Swiss com­pa­ny, which is a deal­er of tools and tool/workpiece clamp­ing tech­nol­o­gy and rep­re­sents exclu­sive­ly Ger­man and Swiss man­u­fac­tur­ers in Spain. “Our strat­e­gy is to min­i­mize the num­ber of our sup­pli­ers,” says Enric Jor­da, BJB Head of Pro­duc­tion, describ­ing one of the con­di­tions of col­lab­o­ra­tion. “For us it all comes down to trust. At the same time, we expect the solu­tion to be pro­duc­tive, which we con­sis­tent­ly com­pare with the costs.” The rea­son for that, he explains, is the fact that BJB doesn’t man­u­fac­ture any series and doesn’t test every work­piece or tool. “We mon­i­tor the gen­er­al costs and want to man­u­fac­ture the best we can under the most eco­nom­i­cal con­di­tions,” says Jor­da. In this con­stel­la­tion, it’s cru­cial for him that the part­ners speak direct­ly to his machine oper­a­tors and opti­mize appli­ca­tions with them. “Ger­Swiss is a prime exam­ple of what we expect of our part­ners: ongo­ing improve­ment of the knowl­edge of our machine oper­a­tors and con­tin­u­ous pro­vi­sion of solu­tions.” This approach now over­sees the entire tool launch between the machine oper­a­tors and Ger­Swiss. “Togeth­er we then try to main­tain peak per­for­mance with all of the tools and hold­ers,” says Oscar Velil­la, CEO of Ger­Swiss. “At the same time, we mon­i­tor tool use via a tool man­age­ment sys­tem and ensure opti­mal plan­ning at all times.” Ger­Swiss sup­plies tools and clamp­ing tech­nol­o­gy for the entire mate­r­i­al and tech­nol­o­gy indus­try – for milling, drilling, and turn­ing as well as for tap­ping and grinding.

The use of REGO-FIX powR­grip tool­hold­ers also stems from this approach. “Orig­i­nal­ly, we only worked with col­lethold­ers and Wel­don chucks,” says Jor­da. “We were nev­er impressed with the shrink­ing because the wear wors­ens grad­u­al­ly and uncon­trol­lably and because employ­ees are exposed to the risk of burn­ing when using them. We were much more impressed with the mechan­i­cal powR­grip sys­tem from the very begin­ning.” The sys­tem was intro­duced at the same time as the col­let and Wel­don hold­ers nine years ago. “At that time, we had to mill hard­ened parts with small tool diam­e­ters more fre­quent­ly,” says the Head of Pro­duc­tion. “The wear on col­lethold­ers is, of course, very high here. And pre­ci­sion and con­cen­tric­i­ty are espe­cial­ly impor­tant when it comes to small tool diam­e­ters. So, we had to invest.” Accord­ing to Jor­da, there’s anoth­er rea­son why they used powR­grip rather than shrink­ing: “The sys­tem is very sim­ple to use.” This is all the more impor­tant for BJB Proce­sa because all of the employ­ees pre­pare their tools themselves.

Today, nine years lat­er, one thing is clear: powR­grip was the right choice, reli­ably cov­er­ing the tool manufacturer’s range of parts. Proce­sa now uses REGO-FIX hold­ers for 70 per­cent of its appli­ca­tions. All tools with a stan­dard­ized shank are clamped with powR­grip. Tools are only clamped dif­fer­ent­ly if, for exam­ple, inter­me­di­ate sizes are required for core drilling or tap­ping or if car­bide drills with rein­forced shank are used.

The spec­trum of appli­ca­tions for col­lets cur­rent­ly ranges from PG 10 and PG 15 to PG 25. When it comes to sol­id car­bide, cut­ters with diam­e­ters between 0.2 and 25.4 mm can thus be accom­mo­dat­ed, as can insert tools with diam­e­ters up to 40 mm. The usu­al spec­trum in drilling ranges from 1.5 to 25 mm, while threads are pro­duced with tools fea­tur­ing a shank diam­e­ter of up to 16 mm, whether it’s in HSS or – if the work­piece mate­r­i­al is hard­ened – in sol­id car­bide. Of course, the short­est tool­hold­ers pos­si­ble are used. But due to BJB Procesa’s range of parts, PG S mod­els with an espe­cial­ly short shank are cur­rent­ly in less demand, as are PG L col­lets with a long shank and the secuR­grip lock­ing solu­tion for espe­cial­ly high extrac­tion secu­ri­ty. BJB Proce­sa uses an auto­mat­ic PGU 9500 clamp­ing unit, which fix­es col­lets with 90 kN in the hold­er. The tool shank is secure­ly cen­tered over the slot­ted col­let, thus guar­an­tee­ing con­cen­tric­i­ty accu­ra­cy of 0.003 mm.

There’s not a doubt in Jorda’s mind: “Invest­ing in a long-last­ing prod­uct was absolute­ly the right deci­sion. We’ve been using powR­grip for nine years now and haven’t had a sin­gle prob­lem in all that time. The sys­tem is fast and easy to use and requires vir­tu­al­ly no replace­ment invest­ment. The only addi­tion­al costs come from expand­ing the powR­grip appli­ca­tion.” The sys­tem costs are thus more than appro­pri­ate. In fact, the Head of Pro­duc­tion would even go so far as to say that the val­ue for mon­ey is the only right option for achiev­ing his goals: pre­ci­sion and qual­i­ty. “We’ve nev­er had to make a part over again because a tool had some­how behaved crit­i­cal­ly in the holders.”