For the millimeter-precise cutting of our formliners, a new machine has recently been put to use.
Sustainability, Company News
New Cutting Machine Made of Wood
A Sustainable Solution
At first, this does not sound particularly unusual, but it is made almost entirely of wood, hence the name wood cutter. The wood router consists of a base, a table and a gantry, which are made of coated birch multi-layer boards. Only the legs of the table structure, which are filled with polymer concrete to increase stability, and guides and spindles made of metal complement the wooden structure.
Equipped with a tangential knife, the machine cuts formliners up to 90mm thick. The table is equipped with a vacuum and blowing function, which sucks the formliners during the cutting process and creates an air cushion after completion to allow the formliners to be moved easily.
More Possibilities for Custom Designs
All geometries are possible, whether circles, arcs, rectangles, trapezoids, polygons, freeform - all no problem for the cutting machine. The corners can be sharp-edged or rounded. Likewise, the cutter can cut recesses from the center of the formliner for windows, for example.
"We have even puzzled together formliner from different structures according to customer requirements," says product developer Volker Urmoneit. "But numbers and letters can also be cut out. So the machine also expands our design scope."
The new cutting machine allows us to cut our formliners even more precisely as well as save our employees valuable time needed to prepare the formliners. In comparison, the wood milling machine is a good three times faster than for cutting by hand. So from an ecological and economic point of view, it's a win-win situation, because the wood milling machine is made from renewable raw materials and saves important working time needed to prepare the formliners.