A company of the WEINIG group

Software for window manufacturing: Producing variable mouldings efficiently

06/29/2018

The German company Strobel is an ambitious window manufacturer. And with WEINIG technology it has bought virtually permanent progress. Now WEINIG found an innovative solution for producing mouldings in the family business.

The heart of the wooden window production line at Strobel is a fully automated WEINIG Conturex Compact CNC center with 32 axes. The company has a very high number of profiles in its range and manufactures to order, i.e. in small batch sizes. Accordingly, it requires a high degree of flexibility and minimal set-up times for high cost-effectiveness. A separate solution was sought for the production of mouldings that could meet the highest demands.

A strong system

The company chose the WEINIG moulder Powermat 1500. With the PowerLock tool that can be changed within seconds and the powerful PowerCom Plus controller, the Powermat 1500 is ideally suited to Strobel’s requirements. The customer machine offers variable machining possibilities with 8 spindles. A special feature is the pure design for profiling Strobel’s complete range of mouldings all around windows and beyond. These include above all glazing beads, sash bars, weatherboards, window stops, roller slats and slats for front doors.

Innovative software

With the aim of maximum efficiency, WEINIG developed a special software solution for variable mouldings for Strobel. The basic idea is that only the basic profile is stored in the profile list, although the customer produces the same profiles in a variety of dimensions.

In order to maintain an overview and still be able to produce the required profile quickly, the customer first calls up the basic profile in the PowerCom Plus controller and then specifies the finished profile dimensions (width and height). These parameters are used to automatically calculate the required spindle positions and to position the spindles fully automatically.

And most importantly: The spindle positions are calculated using stored formulas, because some of the profiles move through the machine in a different position. This is illustrated by the following example:

The finished profile has dimensions of 51 x 36 mm, but when guided through the moulder, the reference surface results in dimensions of 57.04 x 35.09 mm for the left and the upper spindle. Exactly these spindle positions are calculated automatically by stored formulas (see the PowerCom Plus screenshot).

Numerous benefits

For the customer, the new software saves time both when creating a new profile and when retrieving a profile, because searching the profile list is much easier and scaling is very simple and fast. In addition, the customer can create new profiles and store the corresponding formulas in PowerCom Plus. Despite the extreme variance of the profiles (some of which differ only in their dimensions), the customer achieves a very high degree of flexibility and short set-up times.