Erwin Junker

Whenever Thomas Baur is standing in front of one of his Quickpoint machines from Junker, it is usually running at full speed. “Quickpoint has one of the highest production hours that we have ever achieved,” says Baur, head of the cylindrical grinding department at the MAPAL Centre of Competence for solid carbide tools. “Here, Quickpoint’s capacity utilisation is up to 95%,” adds MD Ulrich Krenzer. The MAPAL Group is a leading international supplier of precision tools for machining almost any materials, with over 5,000 employees around the world.

The MAPAL Centre of Competence for solid carbide tools in Germany, produces high-performance drilling and milling tools for renowned customers in the automotive industry, aviation, mechanical engineering, and the tools trade. These include replaceable head milling cutters which have solid carbide blades and a steel shank piece, which are connected to one another by a coupling.

MAPAL’s replaceable head milling cutters are manufactured with such precision that they can be exchanged without the need for tool offsets in the machine. “The tool head is unscrewed and the new blade is fitted. You basically press the start button again and production continues,” explains Baur. Conventional shank tools can normally only be exchanged in the tool presetting room, where the lengths must be precisely set on the measuring machine. The measurement system used on the Quickpoint 3000-60S detects fluctuations and automatically corrects them, as well as the wear level of the grinding wheel, for example. It is this level of accuracy which results in consistently high quality.