METZNER MASCHINENBAU GMBH - Your Partner for Automation Solutions

Metzner has been developing and designing production machinery for tube machining for nearly three decades. Thanks to these many years of experience, today we can offer solutions that are adapted to the variety of different tube diameters and material properties. Wherever tubes have to be cut in very large quantities, impact knife machines are used. The Metzner Dynamat series achieves up to 4000 cuts per minute with one knife and, if required, an even higher cutting performance with multiple knives. Customers have the choice between "stop & go" cut or continuous cut. There are different machine sizes for materials of up to 120 mm diameter, which are prepared as standard for a wide range of peripheral equipment and knife moistening. The Dynamat machines process elastic materials reliably and with repetitive accuracy – from silicone tubes for the medical sector to fabric-reinforced tubes and profiles. No difference whether the material comes from an extruder or is unwound from a coil.

An internationally active medical technology company that produces and sells catheter tubes, among other things, has optimized its manufacturing process with the help of a production line from Metzner Maschinenbau. With Metzner's know-how, it was possible to replace a costly manual process with an automatic machine, saving costs. At the same time, the length accuracy and the cutting quality were significantly improved. The company supplied a fully automatic system that precisely cuts the catheter tubing to length, removes the mandrel present from the extrusion without leaving any residue and without longitudinal expansion, and then deposits the tubing in a collecting container at the end. Processing with exact length accuracy and mandrel removal The Metzner special development cuts catheter tubes to an exact length and removes the mandrel inside safely and precisely. The finished material is deposited in a collection container.

The special Metzner development is a fully automatic machinery consisting of a contact-free loop control, an automatic cutting machine and a crushing station with storage system. It can produce polystyrene pipettes with diameters from 4 to 25 mm and lengths from 100 to 700 mm. The extruded material is first scored with the aid of several rotary cutting heads, then broken and finally deposited in collecting containers. The cycle time for four parts is only 1.5 seconds. For the production of short lengths (up to 120 mm), the cycle time is extended to approximately three seconds.

The Metzner special development department produces endotracheal tubes with high precision and cleanliness. This is ensured, among other things, by processes such as automatic loading, alignment and positioning of the tubes, processing by seven consecutive work stations and automatic quality control by sensors. Our product video will give you an insight into the machining process. Maschinenbau GmbH has sustainably reduced the production costs of the end products and created additional production capacities with a fully automatic production system for endotracheal tubes.

Plastic-coated steel cablestrands are cut to length using a special shear cut module and then stripped with the cutting module of the AM3500 without the wires "jumping open".Bare steel cable wires are transported by the modified AM 3500 directly to the special cutting machine, which is coupled between the AM 3500 and the material stacker and which cuts the material to length by a thermal process. Due to the special electric welding process used here, the individual wires do not twist up during cutting, and a smooth rope start and a smooth rope end without thickening are produced. Long steel cable wires/strands are placed in a tray after processing, while short pieces of material fall down a chute into a collecting container. With the high-performance solution developed by Metzner, the customer can process different types of material in different processes. Further advantages of the machinery are high precision, high quality, an increase in productivity and lower personnel costs.

The specially developed production line can unwind, label, roughen, cut to length, strip, wind, bind and automatically deposit the cable wires. The material to be processed is unwound by a motorised unwinder and fed to a thermal transfer printer via a straightener. The latter prints the cable with two QR codes and a serial number. This ensures that each cable can be identified throughout the entire processing and manufacturing process and assigned to the stations which have already passed through. This traceability offers great advantages – for example in the diagnosis of faults. The cable then passes through a roughening station, which lightly roughens the material surface so that the connector overmoulding adheres better later on. An AM 3550 from Metzner Maschinenbau cuts to length and strips the cable, which is then transported to the winding station and onwards by a gripper to the binding machine. The latter winds the cable to form a cable ring.

This special Metzner development is able to process cable wires with a diameter of up to 28 mm. The cycle time for this is 2000 mm / 35 seconds. The processing steps include long slitting, sawing, circumferential cutting, stripping, brushing and depositing. An integrated ink jet printer labels the cable wires with information or markings. As the heart of the processing method, Metzner uses a newly developed stripping head that combines a rotary cut with a powerful clamping and simultaneous rotation of the material. This enables a high-precision, multi-stage radial cut through the various layers of material. Microscopic quality inspection confirms that the processing is flawless with no scratches, pressure or abrasion marks. In addition to the high machining quality, the machinery also offers special precision: both the overall length and the machining position are maintained with an accuracy of 0.2 mm. The machine can process cable wires with diameters up to 28 mm.

Metzner has developed a fully automatic processing machine with outstanding cutting quality and great length accuracy for steel cable wires of up to 20 mm diameter. The steel cable wires are fed by a motorised feeding device in combination with a contact-free loop control. Then, program-controlled and positionally accurate marking tapes are applied to the steel cable – with a cycle time of less than two seconds. In addition, a wax printer marks all the fastening and processing points that will be required for subsequent processing. This labelling method is carried out in a continuous process. The cut is then made using a special cutting process. Precise length accuracy is achieved by a special laser measuring system. A material stacker with a storage area of up to 12 metres ensures that the steel cable wires are deposited in an orderly manner. All cut steel rope can be stored and sorted according to length to allow it to be removed at a later point.

Metzner provides a number of proven automation solutions for the automatic loading and unloading of coating carriers for CVD and PVD coatings. The abbreviations PVD (Physical Vapour Deposition) and CVD (Chemical Vapour Deposition) stand for different coating processes. When loading the PVD spears, we differentiate between "single-loading" and "back-to-back loading". In addition to part loading, spacers are loaded onto the spears in addition to the parts. In single-loading, a spacer is located behind each individual insert, whereas in back-to-back-loading, two inserts are placed "back to back" and only then is a spacer loaded. To implement "back-to-back-loading", a turning station is integrated into the machinery. This station is used to turn the corresponding insert by 180 degrees, loading it directly onto the respective spear.

Metzner powder press and indexable insert automations of the "RPA 3-SC series" automatically remove pressed blanks from a powder press and deposit them quickly and gently in a definable sample. In the "RPA 3-SC1", the transfer of the individual sintering plates and the loading of the blanks is carried out by a SCARA 4-axis robot. The empty sintering plates are placed manually into a sintering plate magazine, removed with a sintering plate gripper if necessary, and fed to the loading position. The robot then moves to a gripper station, deposits the sintering plate gripper, picks up a part gripper, and starts loading the sintering plate. In the "RPA 3-SC2", sintering plates are placed manually on a double conveyor belt. One sintering plate at a time is automatically transported to the loading position via the conveyor belt. The robot immediately starts to load the blanks. Loaded sintering plates are ejected from the loading position and manually removed from the conveyor belt.