When Gühring, one of the world’s leading manufacturers and supplier of rotary cutting tools entered the South African market in the 1990s it was not only to sell product but also to capture the market for reconditioning services for carbide end mills.
Gühring opened its regrind facility in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape late 1999. The 180m² factory served its purposes until a new 873m² factory was built in 2010 in the Greenbushes area of Port Elizabeth and the company moved.
Gühring offers reconditioning and coating services for carbide end mills
Gühring offers a complete reconditioning services for carbide end mills, including refurbishing of used tools and the addition of corner radius. In addition to standard helix end mill designs, our reconditioning division can also recondition Gühring variable flute and variable helix carbide end mills. Please contact Gühring directly for reconditioning inquiries for non-Gühring manufactured variable flute designs.
Equipment
Amongst the equipment used are three Hawemat 2000 CNC 5-axis regrind machine and one Hawemat 3000 regrind machine, one manual grinding machine, a cylindrical grinding machine point grinding machine, one web thinning machine and two Gühring UN135 grinding machines.
In 2002 Gühring installed a coating plant and this moved to the new factory as well. What these services circumvented for the local market was having to send tooling to Germany for reconditioning.
PCD tipped tools
Fixed pocket PCD and PCBN drills, reamers, end mills and others can also be reconditioned by Gühring using their state-of-the-art grinding equipment at a fraction of the price of a new tool. All reconditioned PCD tools are refurbished to the original manufacturing specifications. The original tool blueprint drawing is requested for PCD and PCBN tooling when available to assure dimensional accuracy for all tools not originally manufactured by Gühring. If the original tool is manufactured by Gühring, you just provide the tool number or original manufacturing job number or even quote number to expedite the reconditioning quote process.
On-site assessment
Gühring has also introduced a service whereby a trained Gühring field representative can visit your facility and conduct a reconditioning assessment to assist you in identifying areas to reduce the cost of your reconditioned tools and possibly improve your productivity.
A reconditioning assessment will advise the types of tooling that Gühring’s reconditioning programme is designed to handle, calculate the economical lot sizes that will save the most money, train operators on when to pull used tools from before they are excessively damaged, review minimum flute and diameter specifications, review acceptable margin wear or damage, provide information about Gühring’s scrap carbide programme, suggest point grinds to help save money, review corner radius blend requirement to reduce costs and plan how best to properly package worn tools and the shipping options.
Extreme care should be taken when re-packaging PCD tipped tools for shipment to reduce damage during shipping
Re-packaging information
Extreme care should be taken when re-packaging PCD tipped tools for shipment to reduce damage during shipping. Gühring recommend that you ship tools in their original plastic tubes or boxes when possible or separate each tool with bubble wrap to reduce the possibility of chipping the tools. You can request a Gühring reconditioning shipping container at the time of your quote, or, if you are pressed for time, you can ship the tools in your own packaging and then request that your tools be returned in a Gühring reconditioning shipping container that you can use for future regrinds.
As the ongoing quest for maximising productivity advances relentlessly, tooling manufacturing has become ultra-competitive. Although each would probably disagree vehemently, in reality there’s probably not much separating the top four or five companies – each produce excellent products and provide high levels of support and engineering expertise – but Gühring is not just a tooling manufacturer.
Although known primarily for its vast range of rotary cutting tools – drills, reamers, gundrills, taps, milling cutters, countersinks, thread cutting tools and toolholders, the company, through the acquisition of Hollfelder in 2007 added adjustable tooling insert solutions to its product portfolio effectively filling a gap in its product range.
On-site assessment: Gühring has also introduced a service whereby a trained Gühring field representative can visit your facility and conduct a reconditioning assessment to assist you in identifying areas to reduce the cost of your reconditioned tools and possibly improve your productivity
But there’s a whole lot more to Gühring. It manufacturers its own range of 9-axis CNC grinders entirely for in-house use, it produces its own carbide and develops its own coatings. If that wasn’t enough, Gühring also makes its own coating machines and tool vending management systems. This is a company that has not only developed its own range of products but also the processes and machines used to make those products most efficiently. It’s a forward thinking organisation too and invests 5% of its total turnover back into research and development.
Fourth generation
Founded in 1898, Gühring has successfully evolved to take the place as one of the leading manufacturers and suppliers of rotary cutting tools.
Gottlieb Gühring started the company with 17 employees manufacturing a small range of twist drills, spirit levels, screw clamps, fastening chains and plumb bobs. In 1964, the current owner and Gottlieb’s grandson, Dr Jörg Gühring joined the company. Today, Oliver Gühring represents the fourth generation of the family, sitting alongside his father as part of a four-man executive board and taking responsibility for sales and marketing activities.
Gühring has a presence now in most countries throughout the world. There are 46 sales companies globally, 31 production plants and 47 service centres and the tooling range has grown significantly comprising some 1 850 tool types, including 45 000 standard tools.
Headquartered in Albstadt, Germany, Gühring has three facilities in this area: the original building where the business began which still manufactures HSS drills and special tooling; a fully functional PCD design and manufacturing facility; and a recently acquired factory in Onstmettingen that is used exclusively for the assembly, service and support of its own range of grinding machines.
In addition, a nearby complex in Sigmaringen-Laiz is home to four vital aspects of Gühring’s business: R&D, OEM support, the manufacture of carbide tools and taps and apprentice training. In its tap and threadmill manufacturing plant alone, 60 000 taps are manufactured from start to finish every week.
For further details contact Gühring South Africa on TEL: 041 372 2047/46/43/38 or email info@guhring.co.za
