MOVE TO THE FRONT

Rietberger Fassadentechnik (Rifa; Rietberg, Germany) was established in 2000, and specializes in manufacturing metal fronts for buildings. They also provide sheet manufacturing subcontract services for different materials, such as glass and carbon, due to their range of machining technologies available.

In 2000, Rifa purchased their first punch press machine, along with a JETCAM Expert programming system, supplied as standard by the machine tool vendor. Mr. Laukötter, Director, comments, "After only a very short training session of two days, it was very easy for us to program parts and generate accurate NC code."

The real efficiencies of the new CAM software became apparent after the purchase of a Ridder Waterjet cutter for cutting thicker metals, composite materials and plastics. A postprocessor was supplied by local JETCAM reseller Blechwelt. After only one day, the machine was running and Rifa was generating NC code for it.

Programming of the waterjet also benefited from automatically applied technologies within the CAM software. For example, the feedrate is automatically reduced when approaching a corner and increased when starting from a corner to ensure optimal cutting quality on every edge.

In 2007, Rifa purchased a SCM Pratix 15 Router to extend their machining capacities and increase prospective business. JETCAM Expert supported many of the high level routing functions, which drastically reduced the programming time for complex operations.

Features on the routing module include automatic auxiliary milling of sharp angles in corners with small cutters, along with the ability to cut pockets and set up 3D micro joints, as well as numerous other routing-specific functions to ensure that programming time is kept to a minimum. All of these features were intelligently applied automatically.

Today, two users program the machines using this same CAM software. Parts are programmed and tooling information applied for all three machines, ensuring that they are immediately available to be nested, regardless of the technology used to cut them.

Mr. Laukötter concludes: "With this CAM software we are not only able to program the machines quickly and easily, but because we can apply tooling information for all machines on each part we can move jobs to another machine with a mouse click. We can also easily compare the costs and runtimes of running jobs on the different machines production. This saves enormous money and time.

Also, online support is excellent ? Blechwelt dials into our computer so that every question can be solved within the shortest time possible. Since the foundation of the company, Rifa has trusted in this CAM software and the expert knowledge of reseller Blechwelt GMBH. As a result of this, we have enjoyed considerable company growth."

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Blechwelt GMBH, Chamomile way 22, 53757 sank, Augustin, Germany, 0700 80 707070, Fax: 0700 80 707071, www.blechwelt.com.

JETCAM International, Terrasses du Port, 2 Avenue des Ligures, MC98000 Monaco, +44 (0)870 760 6469, www.jetcam.com.