Q) What industries do your customers typically hail from?
The list is extensive, and the industries that our potential customers are in can range from automotive, aerospace, marine, wind, oil & gas, leisure and communications. At present, we are mainly producing kits out of composite materials for the automotive, leisure and communications industry.
Q) And what materials types are predominantly cut on your flatbed machines?
Our main volume would be carbon and glass fibre prepregs. We also have a large customer range with requirements for cutting RTM glass. Dry carbon is a niche area in the market due to the risks involved when cutting the fabric, but we are confident that the Zünd G3 has allowed us to overcome this, therefore excelling in the composite market.
Q) What were your reasons for specifying a new flatbed cutting system?
One of the main reasons we chose Zünd was the ability to configure the machine on size, width and tooling to meet our exact requirements. This has enabled us to offer our customers a tailored cutting service, whilst exploring new business opportunities - thanks to the variety of tooling options available. Another reason would be the technology and build which is designed for high-volume production, the G3 flatbed cutter transcends in delivering both productivity and excellent cut quality.
Q) In terms of a wish list, what types of demands did you specify in terms of purchasing a flatbed cutting system?
An important aspect for us was the proven protection systems against carbon fibre ingress that were in place. Another benefit to having the Zünd cutter was the support network instilled by Zünd, ensuring we can rely on any training that may be needed in the future, helping with the development of our service.
Q) What was the rationale behind choosing the Zünd machines over other machine builders?
The aesthetics of the machine looked smarter, whereas other machines looked clumsy or cheaply made. Zünd offered to do as many trials and tests on our materials to prove the reliability and capability of the machine.
Q) Tell me something about the Zünd flatbed cutter machines you use?
Most of our materials vary from less than 1mm to around 5mm in thickness. Should we need to process foams and other thicker materials, The Zünd machine can do up to 50mm. We use various software systems for the design and nesting of materials. The package and software we already had in place prior to the Zünd machine was compatible and flexible in terms of integrating the software into the machine, so there was no need for us to upgrade this aspect. We use the marker pen module for drawing and writing. However, we are currently assessing the Leibinger ink jet spray system add-on, which would greatly speed up our text processing times.
Q) Do the Zünd machines come with automated roll-feeding of dry fabric/prepreg material equipment to the machine’s bed?
We use manual feeding frames through a contractor recommended by Zünd who is quite local to us.
Q) Do you have a favourite customer success story through using the Zünd flatbed cutting machines that you can bring to mind?
Cristex has worked with Urban Automotive to convert their physical templates used for manual prepreg cutting into digital files which can be processed into kits. More specifically, Cristex has supported Urban with the new G Wagon 2018 project, supplying kits for all 43 carbon fibre components on the vehicle. The introduction of kits into the production at Urban Automotive has increased quality and consistency of produced parts, reduced material wastage and reduced layup time. The Zünd G3 runs at a speed of up to 1.4m per second while offering repeatability of ±0.03mm, accelerating the production process, increasing productivity in our kitting department and therefore being able to supply Urban with the demand required.
Q) In summary, what differentiates Zünd machines from the competition?
For us, it was the start-to-end journey that Zünd offered. From the initial point of contact, the expertise Zünd provided was great and they ensured they understood what capabilities we needed to achieve our goals. Secondly, it’s their simple-to-use intuitive controls and modularity, coupled with the pleasing aesthetics of the machine.
