WIN woodworking INTERNATIONAL 2022/3

COMPANIES
Vecoplan expands its global service bases
Spain, Poland, the United Kingdom and Italy – Vecoplan is consistently expanding its service bases in Europe to be geographically
closer to its customers and provide them with even better services. Users benefit from faster spare parts supply, reliable on-site support
and a significantly higher availability of their plants and machines as a result. They also have a contact person who knows their
market intimately.
With its service centers, Vecoplan AG offers reliable on-site support
Customers always have a contact person who knows their
market inside out.
Besides Poland, Spain and the United
Kingdom, Italy now also has a Vecoplan service
base. Vecoplan has built up a large “installed
base” in that country. The company has
also opened an independent sales office with a
workshop in Ferrara to provide Italian customers
with even better services. There are currently
seven employees in Ferrara. “We look at the
markets very closely of course,” says Pfeil, Head
of the Services division at Vecoplan AG. “Our
goal is to establish even more presence in the
locations where we have been successfully active
for many years. To achieve this, we look at
each country to specifically address that individual
market.” France will soon be added to the list
of countries with expanded services. Vecoplan’s
pan-European presence has simultaneously created
space for growth.
Italian customers also benefit from a consistent
supply of spare parts. Vecoplan intends
to expand this approach worldwide. “Due to
the current unstable supply chains, our goal is
to use this concept to increase the availability
of our machines and plants,” explains Pfeil. The
Westerwald company also offers special service
agreements to respond to customers’ needs.
These agreements enable customers to secure
response times, for example, or receive better
on-site support through inspection and maintenance
packages.
Vecoplan also offers a powerful digitalisation
concept with its Vecoplan Smart Center
(VSC). Via VSC.connect, customers receive a
modern communication interface between
Vecoplan and their plants. They can then access
services such as document management and remote
service. The integrated, intuitive VSC.control
operating panel serves as a communication
medium for the machine’s control system and a
live link to the Vecoplan technicians.
www.vecoplan.com
Timber plant reduces downtime
Thanks to the adoption of NSK’s linear guides with K1 lubrication units, a timber manufacturer
managed to reduce conveyor downtime by a factor of more than 12, prompting
annual cost savings of more than €77,000.
The British timber manufacturer supplies
wooden beams to the building industry. At one
production station, a conveyor system transports
the beams to a processing machine, performing
forward and backward motion with
rapid changes of direction. Due to the demands
of this operation the company had to
replace the conveyor’s linear guides every two
weeks on average, a situation that was clearly
unacceptable.
A request arrived from the company’s management
team asking NSK for recommendations
on how to extend the service life of the
linear guides. Analysis of failed units by NSK
experts revealed that they were not capable
of withstanding the high loads which occur at
each change of direction. In addition, the linear
guides sometimes jammed completely due
to the intrusion of wood particles.
NSK’s recommendation was to adopt NSK
linear guides equipped with fully integrated K1
lubrication units. K1 units progressively release
lubrication oil (embedded in the pores of a polyolefin
resin) on to the raceway over a very long
time period.
Since the upgrade, the system has been
running for six months without a single failure.
The service life of the linear guides has thus increased
by a factor of more than 12, with a corresponding
reduction in related costs for material
and downtime. In total, NSK’s cost benefit
analysis showed annual savings of around
€77,800.
The K1 lubrication unit is available for any
linear guide in NSK’s range. As shown by this
example, linear guides equipped with the K1
are maintenance-free across a very long service
Linear guides with K1 lubrication units achieve long service
lives even in tough operating conditions, such as those in the
timber manufacturing industry.
life, even (and especially) under adverse operating
conditions.
Along with the retrofit of the conveyor system,
NSK provided comprehensive linear guide
training for the company’s maintenance personnel.
Among the topics covered by the training
were: differences in materials; product selection
based on load capacity; and different types
of linear guides and their options. NSK also explained
the function of the K1 lubrication unit.
www.nsk.com
8 No. 3 • August 2022