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‘Little jewel’ is his pet name for his HEDELIUS. It is the first machine with this brand that Walter Osthoff – proprietor of Osthoff-Senge, a leading international producer of singing machines – has used in the nearly hundred-year history of his company in Wuppertal. We’re talking about a HEDELIUS C 80 Magnum, a moving-column CNC machining centre made by HEDELIUS Maschinenfabrik in Meppen (Germany), which incorporates more than forty years of experience in developing and producing vertical machining centres.

Machine builders are inherently loyal by nature and are not quick to change partners. What motivated a successful businessman such as Osthoff to try something new after so many years? ‘I simply like what HEDELIUS has to offer’, says the man whose grandfather transformed singing technology in the early 1900s with the invention of a high-performance burner with controllable combustion.

Osthoff has since become a synonym for singing, just as Kleenex has become a generic term for paper tissues. More than 2000 ultra-modern singing and pre-treatment lines throughout the world ensure that the finished surfaces of fabrics made from spun yarns are almost entirely free of hairs and fibres. A flame at 1250 °C brushes over the surface for a few hundredths of a second – and with the same intensity everywhere.

The sales figures of family-owned Osthoff-Senge, which has nearly seventy employees, have grown at double-digit rates during recent years, which incidentally is also true of HEDELIUS. The export share of the singing machine builder is 99%. Most of the machines go to Asia, but even with the proverbial ‘Made in Germany’ quality, Walter Osthoff is confronted with enormous price pressure. This makes every percentage point of productivity improvement worth its weight in gold.

He could discuss everything with HEDELIUS sales manager Dennis Hempelmann and the engineers in Meppen, and communication was ‘fast and uncomplicated’. Although he was impressed by the outstanding cutting capacity and robustness of the standard version of the C 80 Magnum four-axis machining centre, he had a special requirement that he wanted to see fulfilled. Would it be possible to further reduce set-up times and thus boost productivity? The people from Meppen sat down at a table with the people from Wuppertal, and they jointly found a pragmatic solution: instead of having the operator press a button to open the doors, door opening is controlled by a timer, and the doors only open only as wide as necessary for clamping or removing the workpiece. The result is a clear time saving. Walter Osthoff is fully satisfied with the machine tool manufacturer: ‘HEDELIUS gave us excellent support and delivered an optimum solution in a short time.’

Each year the HEDELIUS unit drills and mills 250,000 holes in various components for final assembly in Osthoff singing machines. The tool magazine of the Magnum version of the moving-column machine holds 56 tools. A key factor here is the high availability of the tool magazine, which operates without potentially troublesome gripper systems or hydraulic systems. ‘The important factors are good repeatability and the ability of the machine to properly with- stand roughing loads in continual use’, says machine operator Mike Don, who appreciates the easer of use of the new machine. During the breaking-in period, HEDELIUS’s expert customer service employees were always ready to assist him when he had questions. And now that the machine is in regular use, ‘the service is super’, as Walter Osthoff emphasises. For him, the ’95 percent machine availability in the standard package’ advertised by HEDELIUS sounds like an understatement. ‘So far, our experience with our HEDELIUS unit is one-hundred percent quality and constant availability.’

Another thing the medium-sized company appreciates about the HEDELIUS machine is its excellent price/performance ratio. This is no coincidence, but instead a direct result of the corporate strategy of the machine builder. Several years ago, managing directors Gerhard and Jürgen Hempelmann adopted the ‘platform strategy’ used in the automotive industry. ‘This means that we work in a highly rational manner with standardised modules that we can combine to produce high-performance machining centres to meet every demand’, explains Gerhard Hempelmann. ‘We have one of the most extensive modular machine systems, which makes almost everything possible.’

About HEDELIUS

Meppen-based HEDELIUS Maschinenfabrik was founded in 1967, and it currently has 130 employees. Under the leadership of Gerhard and Jürgen Hempelmann, the family-owned business has specialised in vertical travelling-column CNC machining centres. Its extensive range of machines encompasses three-axis, four-axis and five-axis machines in shuttle and combination models, and the machines are marketed throughout Europe. By now, one out of every ten travelling-column machining centres in Europe is a HEDELIUS unit. The company’s customers include machine manufacturers and their suppliers in the following sectors: agricultural engineering, the textile industry, the aviation industry, vehicle construction, packaging, lifting equipment, household appliances, manufacturers of blow-forming machines, manufacturers of cutting tools, and many more.

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