THINK BIG

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The largest single-piece measuring machine developed and built by WENZEL to date has been in use since January 2021. She was placed with Forma Maschinenbau Zerspanungstechnologie GmbH & Co. KG, which is thus taking its already outstanding service portfolio to a new dimension. Think big, but please be accurate to a thousandth. This is how the philosophy of Forma Maschinenbau Zerspanungstechnologie GmbH & Co. KG can be summed up (measurement) in a nutshell. The company based in Borken, Münsterland, is one of the “big players” in the industry — in the literal sense of the word. With production capacities for workpieces up to 24 meters long, 5 meters high and 160 tons in weight, you significantly exceed the usual performance dimensions. “Well, we're not necessarily the garage company,” it sounds modestly from the mouth of senior company boss Norbert Gross-Onnebrink, who runs Forma together with his son Tobias. In fact: Everything here is a bit bigger and more impressive than usual. Starting with over 10,000 square meters of modern hall space and a building front completely equipped with solar panels (1 MW total output) to modern ventilation systems in all halls, which provide a total of 100,000 cubic meters of temperature-controlled fresh air per hour. Not to mention the impressive modern machinery with 7 large machines, 10 machining centers and 4 lathes for the highest quality large parts or small parts produced here as individual or series parts.

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And at Forma, “think big” now also applies in the area of measurement technology: In the form of the largest WENZEL gantry measuring machine ever built to date. A performance giant with a measurement range of 2600 x 4,500 x 1,750 millimeters and a total weight of 27,330 kilograms, with the base plate alone, finely lapped out of a block of granite, already weighing 18 tons. The “large contingent” known as LH 2617 was developed and implemented on the basis of WENZEL LH 2015, whose measurement range of 2,000 x 3,000 x 1,500 millimeters has been extended accordingly. Not an easy task, as the performance capacity of the advanced LH starting machine in 2015 was generally considered to be technologically exhausted. But just in principle...

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Because WENZEL wouldn't be WENZEL if the development department hadn't set out to “break” previous limits. Motivated not least by Forma company leaders, who absolutely prioritized a WENZEL solution after intensive market comparison. And inspired by long-standing WENZEL partner Ingenieurbüro Klostermann from Remscheid, whose trust in WENZEL's problem-solving expertise was ultimately the inspiring spark for the project. Trust that should pay off: The required accuracy of “less than 5 microns” was achieved in an almost playful way during the first acceptance by Forma at the supplier plant — and finally clarified down to 3.8 + L/300 [μm]. This is not least thanks to the outstanding environmental conditions in the specially designed, air-conditioned measurement room at Forma. It was also decisive for its use to place a measuring machine here that does not require an additional foundation of its own. As is the case with the construction concept of a single-piece measuring machine — but with the required measurement range has not been available on the market to date. Until then... until WENZEL came into play. Since then, thinking big down to thousandths has been well-managed day-to-day business for Forma, even when it comes to (wage) measurement.