The Holz-Handwerk trade fair in Nuremberg gave master carpenter Andreas Schulz the decisive idea for optimizing his production.
At the booth of CNC specialist BENZ Tooling, he discovered the SIMOLO CNC orbital sanding unit — the beginning of a success story. Today, production parts are no longer sanded manually, but CNC-controlled. And in a tenth of the time it used to take.
Andreas Schulz, managing director of Reinhard Schulz GmbH in Kerken, a small community on the left bank of the Lower Rhine not far from the Dutch border with Venlo, has specialized his company—among other products—in the production of high-quality
Hi-Macs® bathtub access doors.
These bathtub access doors are installed in the customer's existing bathtub and help older and physically impaired people (e.g., those with new knee or hip joints) to get into the tub when they are no longer able to climb over the height of the tub themselves.
Early on, after completing his qualification as a master carpenter at the age of just 24, he bought his father's business and focused on this niche product with a growing sales market. The company currently manufactures around 350 bathtub access doors per year, which corresponds to more than 10 percent of sales in Germany.
“Before I knew about the BENZ orbital sanding unit, sanding doors was a purely manual process. I used a hand-held orbital sanding unit to give the doors the right finish – a dusty and physically demanding job. Visiting the BENZ Tooling booth at the trade fair showed me new manufacturing possibilities with the orbital sanding unit that I definitely wanted to test.”
Andreas Schulz, Managing Director of Reinhard Schulz GmbH in Kerken
Shortly afterwards, BENZ application engineer Hansjörg Nopper visited the company in Kerken. He brought with him the SIMOLO orbital sanding unit favored by Andreas Schulz. Andreas Schulz was so impressed by how easy it was for a FELDER technician to set up the unit and then by the test run on his FELDER Format 4 profitH22 that he promptly kept the sample unit in his carpentry workshop.
To achieve the desired surface finish, the workpiece is first face-milled and then finally sanded with the orbital sanding unit on the CNC machine. The previous time-consuming sanding with a hand-held orbital sander is no longer necessary. The Hi-Macs® blanks are manufactured entirely on the CNC machine.
Thanks to the BENZ unit, the working time for the sanding process per bathtub access door has been reduced by 90 percent from 20 minutes to an impressive 2 minutes.
This greatly benefits the production capacity, as it allows the steadily increasing demand to be better met. In addition to the significant time savings, the orbital sanding unit also produces a much smoother surface and achieves a more precise overall result.
“Apart from technical and time-saving advantages, the BENZ unit also offers ergonomic improvements. The work that is now performed by the orbital sanding unit on the CNC machine used to be done with a hand-held orbital sanding unit, which required considerable physical effort,” says Andreas Schulz, explaining the additional benefits.
Reinhard Schulz GmbH has plans for major expansion in the future and is already in the process of setting up another production hall, where a new 5-axis machine is to be installed.
Our goal is to support you in your tasks. Thanks to many years of expertise and the right BENZ aggregates, we are here to help to make your production easier and more efficient.
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BENZ Tooling is one of the world's leading manufacturers and suppliers of components and systems for tool and machine tooling technology. The company employs about 300 people and is represented in over 30 countries worldwide.
