Size reduction equipment manufacturer Rapid Granulator is making a major investment in machining equipment at its headquarters in Bredaryd, Sweden.
Installation of three high-precision, highly automated machining centres, with a total investment of 4.5 million euros ($6.5 million Cdn), will provide the company with extra capacity to produce core components to very tight tolerances while improving overall process flow.
Working at one of Rapid’s new machining centres.
A new “Done-in-One” turning and milling machine was installed in April, followed by a horizontal machining centre in June; a third machine is scheduled to go into operation before the end of the year. The machining centres are fully integrated with an FMS (flexible manufacturing system) centre, involving automatic rail-guided vehicles that have the capability of running without any operator intervention. The two very large horizontal machining centers each hold over 200 different tools and can carry out a wide range of tasks, including grinding, drilling and threading
Components produced on the new equipment will be used in granulators that Rapid produces in Bredaryd and also at its U.S. facility in Pittsburgh, Pa.
“In the future, we will be able to produce tolerance-critical components in much bigger numbers and in larger sizes in-house than before,” said Rapid’s CEO Bengt Rimark. “Machining for us is a core technology. We need to maintain very high accuracy and precision, so it is very important that we have complete control over production of the principal components in the cutter housings.”
The new machining centres in Bredaryd will produce the key machine components for all Rapid granulators.
Rapid has grown every year since the 2008/9 financial crisis,” Rimark said. “We expect demand to continue to increase. Markets around the world are all growing at the moment and we see a lot of investments being made by processors. So, we need to make sure that our lead times remain reasonable.”
In Canada, Rapid is represented by Dier International Plastics in Ontario and D Cube in Quebec.
