New ideas and new perspectives
Groz-Beckert took part in a leading international trade fair, the ITMA in Milan, with the Carding product area back in November 2015. Within just a short time, a revolving flat card and a roller card made from acrylic glass were produced specifically for this trade fair. This enabled an impressive presentation of the extensive product range in the Carding area. Since this first step, the product group has been expanded and the sales and distribution channels strengthened. The existing processes and methods in place at Groz-Beckert KG were a major help here.
A glimpse into the Technical Center Carding for the nonwovens industry
Bundling of expertise and developments
in the Technical Center
The opening of the Technical Center Carding at the headquarters in Albstadt, Germany, was another important step in the expansion of the product area. The production line for the nonwovens industry was commissioned back in June 2016. Since then, the line consisting of bale opener, fine opener, card feeder, roller card, crosslapper with needlepunch or conveyor belt, has been used for testing Groz-Beckert product developments for the nonwovens industry. Thanks to the Technical Center at the headquarters, all improvements on the product can be carried out quickly and early on due to the short paths between product development and the Technology and Development Center. This enables us to offer our customers optimal added value from Groz-Beckert products.
The high-performance card in the Technical Center
Spinning technology was also added to the Technical Center Carding in June last year. As an independent card clothing supplier, Groz-Beckert carries out tests on its own products here on a spinning preparation line with blowroom and revolving flat card in order to develop its expertise further.
This means that Groz-Beckert is ready to push forward new developments in the nonwovens and spinning industry in the future, and to offer optimal products for our customers.
Standardization of warehouse and sales administration
Further decisions and advantages went hand in hand with the concentration of the warehouse and sales administration for Europe at the site in Albstadt, which still apply to this day and have an impact all over the world. Not only was the central warehouse established at the Albstadt site, but a new warehouse with connected service workshop was also opened in India in 2016. The decision regarding warehousing enables Groz-Beckert to react quickly in the case of a machine downtime at the customer, and deliver the required products quickly. The warehousing also guarantees a high availability of standard products for our customers. Combined with the usual Groz-Beckert process reliability in logistics and sales, carding customers benefit from a quick delivery and a central contact person.
Groz-Beckert service
– an important part of the product range
The service provided by Groz-Beckert plays an important role for carding customers. The range includes planned and short-term service jobs as well as work in the service workshop. To increase long-term customer satisfaction and to improve process reliability, numerous projects for optimizing service have been carried out and implemented over the past five years. This started with the formation of the new service workshop in Albstadt in 2017. Since then, service workshops have been established all over the world and the range expanded to include the service for the spinning industry, such as flats workshop.
But the company hasn’t just invested in the service workshops - the training of the service team and the equipment of the service technicians have also been expanded and optimized. A standardized accessories portfolio for service technicians and customers includes for example, tools for cleaning and maintenance of card clothing, and can improve the carding result when used correctly. A special mounting equipment was also developed specifically for Groz-Beckert service technicians, which optimizes the mounting process for Groz-Beckert card clothing. The result of these developments is a highly trained service team equipped with the latest tools, available to our carding customers.
Groz-Beckert bobbin with coil belt
New and further developed product portfolio
Over the course of the past five years, the product portfolio has also been continuously optimized to fulfill the requirements of the market. The manufacturing processes and the quality of the products are being continuously improved. An extract from the current portfolio of metallic card clothing, revolving tops and stationary flats can be found in our application brochures for the nonwovens and spinning industry. A strategic development has also enabled us to significantly improve the quality of cleaning fillets and fillets for fancy rollers.
One example of the extensive product optimizations implemented over the past few years is the packaging of metallic card clothing. The design of the Groz-Beckert bobbin has been standardized to achieve a better recognition value for the customer. Coil belts for wires in the nonwovens and long staple fiber spinning industry have also been introduced, which enable easy and ergonomic transport of the bobbins for the customer. Furthermore the bobbin now contains a yellow and a red paper. The yellow paper indicates that the end of the bobbin will be reached in 200 meters, giving the service technician enough time to reduce the mounting speed and prepare for the end of the bobbin (indicated with the red paper).
Another milestone in the expansion of the product area was the development of new products for the spinning and nonwovens industry, which have been worked on intensively over the past five years. The preliminary highlight of this work was the presentation of the first developments under Groz-Beckert at ITMA Barcelona 2019. The new Groz-Beckert InLine card clothing series for the nonwovens industry was presented here, which is based on a new and unique manufacturing process. The new card clothing series is characterized by a controlled, extremely precise hardening of the card clothing teeth, a completely scale-free surface of the wire and a uniform rib height of 1.3 mm. This makes the metallic card clothing more resilient and enables the run-in phase of the card clothing to be shortened – while maintaining the same high web quality. SiroLock® plus, the first special geometry of the Groz-Beckert InLine card clothing range, offers improved carding and more uniform web qualities, even at high throughputs. New and further developed products for the spinning industry were also presented at ITMA 2019. These included the D40-30-31ES doffer wire - a further development of the striated card clothing, offering high performance and better fiber control, particularly with fibers with a dull finish. A further developed cylinder wire with extremely low maintenance requirements thanks to its special tooth design, a new revolving top and a new stationary flat series round off the new developments in the spinning industry.
Groz-Beckert will continue to work on new developments and optimizations of the existing portfolio in the future in order to fulfill customer requirements on the market in the long-term. Customers can expect further results in the coming years.
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Did you know?
When processing cotton, the licker-in wire of a revolving flat card opens and cleans the fibers in a fraction of a second. This means that the fibers are processed faster than the movement of a bee’s wings.