Bosch Transmission Technology B.V., Netherlands

Bosch Transmission Technology B.V. produces the most complex fineblanked components in the world in Tilburg, the Netherlands: elements for push belts in continuously variable transmissions. Every belt contains more than 400 of these elements. With a market share of over 70 percent of all push belts worldwide, Bosch cuts just under two billion individual elements every year. The plant machines 20 to 25 tons of sheet steel every day. This quantity alone shows how important productivity and OEE are for operations.

To further increase output and availability, Bosch Transmission Technology replaced eleven existing MFA 1600 fineblanking presses with ten servomechanical XFT 2500speed fineblanking presses by the start of 2013. With the help of Feintool, this allowed the number of strokes to be increased to 140 strokes per minute. Instead of producing four components per stroke, Bosch now also operates with tools that produce eight components per stroke – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The switch to servomechanical XFT 2500speed presses is ideal for Bosch Transmission Technology’s requirements. The production of the small push belt elements requires high precision. They must be absolutely parallel and symmetrical, which can be managed extremely well using the controllable servo drive in the XFT 2500speed. The result is a product quality of 0 ppm. OEE is also over 80 percent, which is primarily due to the doubling of the tool life from 20,000 to 40,000 parts.

• Product quality of 0 ppm
• High part precision thanks to the servo drive
• Tool life doubled
• OEE of more than 80 percent