PLOW PRODUCTION GETS HOT

A German plastics specialist enters a new market by manufacturing an automated steel hotforming and hardening system for the production of plows in India.

BBG GmbH & Co. KG (Mindelheim, Germany) continued to expand their international business when they delivered a bending/hardening system to Lemken GmbH & Co. KG, a manufacturer of agricultural machinery, for the production of plows in central India. With a headcount of around 880 employees and prior-year sales of €203 million, Lemken is amongst the largest German suppliers of agricultural machinery for soil cultivation.

This steel hotforming and hardening system meets the stringent precision requirements defined for component performance by Lemken by means of a highly rigid mechanical design that was created and calculated by using CAD systems. The system consists of a forming unit and the hardening unit with a dipping tank. In the first step of the system process, special tools are used to form the steel components at a temperature of 900 deg C in the forming unit. With the help of a complex hydraulic system, the forces and speeds required for the process can be generated and controlled precisely.

Following the hotforming process, the hot steel components are dipped in a tank filled with a special liquid. This process must be completed within a few seconds for the components to achieve the required hardness values. Heat dissipation and the filtration of the special liquid in this stage of the process presented a major challenge to the designers.

Pumps are used to agitate the liquid. The liquid must be filtered and its temperature must only vary within a very narrow tolerance around the optimum working temperature of around 30 deg C. Suitable measures must be taken to compensate for the heat input of the red-hot steel components and for the ambient temperature, which may rise to 45 deg C during the summer in India.

The tool lists required are already being created and the assembly process sequences are being planned so that  BBG technicians can install the equipment speedily once it arrives at the Lemken site at Nagpur in October. Prior to the shipment, the equipment is assembled for test purposes, then commissioned and subjected to scrupulous tests.

BBG views the contract as another success story within the framework of their “5/50” business strategy, with which they plan to increase the percentage of sales generated in industries outside the automotive sector to 50 percent by 2012. The company supplies their systems to customers all over the world, with the remaining key accounts coming above all from the plastics-processing industry. In 2010, the family-owned business, which is run by Hans Brandner, the managing partner, generated sales of around €9.2 million. Exports were around 70 percent of total sales in 2010, with the Asian market playing an important role.

BBG has established two competence areas tool construction and engineering products in order to meet the wide range of requirements defined by its business units. Development contracts and innovative production facilities for the construction and solar energy industries are gaining in importance. As early as in 2008, the Mindelheim-based specialist for polyurethane processing was able to use its expertise successfully for the design of so-called hardening presses and to deliver equipment to an Austrian manufacturer.

BBG also currently manufactures a bending/hardening system that was developed in cooperation with Lemken and is used to form and harden steel components for the production of agricultural machinery. In the process, the company uses its expertise gathered over almost four decades in the design and production of mold carrier systems for a wide range of applications in terms of polyurethane processing, in particular for the automotive industry. www.bbg-mbh.com