The division designs, develops, and produces top-quality gear cutting tools at facilities in Ettlingen, Germany, and Turin, Italy. Gear cutting tool services include solution proposals and custom designs for specific client requirements. Given the degree of specialization, tool sales are structured separately from machinery sales in order to provide an optimum level of customer service. Abroad, additional sales representatives provide on-site support to clients.
"Demand for our product range comes from clients worldwide," said Ottmar Kern, sales director for gear cutting tools. "We offer an excellent after-sales service to complement tool design engineering and manufacturing."
Extensive range of services
Aside from gear shaping cutters and galvanised CBN grinding tools for generating and profile grinding, Liebherr Verzahntechnik’s product range also includes shaving cutters for all current shaving processes, rolling tools, such as rolling discs and rolling racks, deburring tools for press-deburring, master gears and rack-shape cutters, all in a wide range of custom specs. The after-sales service includes re-grinding and re-coating of gear cutting tools to return products to original manufacturer quality, as well as the reprocessing of CBN grinding tools by highly-qualified specialists in our own electroplating facility. Galvanic coating of CBN grinding worms and profile discs is customised to specific requirements. Re-coated tools undergo a strict quality control procedure, meaning clients can rely on consistent quality.
“Our specialists guarantee maximum gear-grinding process reliability by applying the greatest possible precision when manufacturing the tools,"Kern said.
Liebherr Verzahntechnik also sets itself apart from the competition in this respect by focussing on the production process as a whole. This means that the tool is not considered on its own but in conjunction with associated machinery and technology.
Client advice covering the entire manufacturing process
This practical focus is one of Liebherr-Verzahntechnik GmbH’s key success factors. Users receive advice exclusively from experienced sales personnel, who themselves have worked in technical departments, such as design engineering, testing or manufacturing. Here too the advice provided does not focus solely on the tool; consideration is rather given to the client’s manufacturing process as a whole. Application engineers are on hand to handle these requests and visit the client’s site to perform process analyses and provide optimum support. In order to perform such analyses, the application engineer’s work (e.g., in gear-shaping-related cases) with Liebherr-Verzahntechnik’s own specially developed software.
“This software is very powerful and we regard it as a market benchmark,” Kern said.
Direct customer benefits provided by contract manufacturing
Customers also benefit directly from Liebherr’s in-house contract manufacturing, which provides continuous feed-back on the performance of the tools and machines as part of small-, medium-, and large-batch production of high-quality components. This feedback is then directly incorporated into Liebherr product enhancement processes.
IMTS 2016: Debut showcase of shaping tools in Triple-A quality
“The tool division benefits greatly from the latest machine innovations," Kern said. "We develop our own gear cutting tool production engineering solutions”, says Ottmar Kern. “The technology developed remains within the company. Therefore, we have — to a certain extent — our own internal know-how pool. At the trade show EMO 2013 Liebherr showcased shaping tools in Triple-A quality for the first time. Another new product introduction will be shaping tools with replaceable inserts. “Our tool manufacturing innovations give us a unique selling point, enabling us to secure a competitive advantage in the market. Innovative solutions and the latest developments in tool manufacturing will enable us to strengthen our position.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION: www.liebherr.com
