Combined System Punch-Laser-Bending Combo for System-Relevant Infrastructure Solutions

Related Vendors

Salvagnini

FAULHABER Drive Systems

Wuxi InfiMotion Technology Co., Ltd.

SIMTOS (Seoul International Machine Tool Show)

Preventing unauthorized persons from entering and protecting the surroundings in case of a technical malfunction—technical buildings place high demands on their doors. In the production of special doors and ventilation elements, infrastructure expert Gritec relies on a punch-laser-bending combo from Salvagnini.

Gritec is one of the leading providers of technical buildings for critical infrastructures in Germany. For more than 60 years, the company has been providing the structural foundation for power, gas, and water networks, mobile communications, broadband, railways, and e-mobility – often in the background but always indispensable. The foundation is the Gritec Stations division, which offers individually designed system solutions ranging from simple structures to fully equipped technical stations. Gritec oversees the entire process: from engineering, design, and manufacturing to assembly and maintenance. Gritec Services also provides tailored support for renovations, relocations, or retrofit measures. Around 1,300 employees at six locations implement over 10,000 projects annually, with a clear goal: ensuring safe, modern, and sustainable supply for today and tomorrow.

With Gritec Elements, the company produces its own metal components and operates one of the most efficient passive ventilation systems on the market. The standardized and customer-specific doors and ventilation elements required for the technical buildings are manufactured in-house by the Gritec Elements division. Here, Volker Knott serves as plant manager. Since taking on his first summer job at the facility in Waghäusel at the age of 16, he has been part of Gritec. He explains: "Here we manufacture the almost corrosion-free aluminum door elements for our technical buildings as well as for external customers. They meet the safety criteria of DIN EN 61936-1 (VDE 0101-1). A key feature of the doors is the internal hinge. It invisibly connects the door leaf to the frame made of aluminum profiles, providing high resistance to forced entry." Additionally, the doors are designed to reliably withstand higher pressure stresses, such as those occurring during technical malfunctions (e.g., arc faults from internal errors). "I like to call these doors our jack-of-all-trades," Knott smiles.

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Linked Sheet Metal Production

In the sheet metal production, which operates in three shifts with around 150 employees, he and Kevin Bühler, head of PPS/Production Technology at Gritec Elements, recently took a significant step toward automation. For about a year now, a punch-laser-bending combination S1+P4 from Salvagnini has been in operation in Waghäusel. "Here, we realized our goal of an integrated sheet metal production from batch size 1 to series production," explains Kevin Bühler. "With the addition of laser technology, new design approaches and products with complex contours have become possible." The combined system consists of an automatic tray storage MV, the punch-laser combination machine S1, which is equipped with a multi-press punching head, a 3-kilowatt laser source, a threading unit, and then feeds the bending center P4 via the automatic sorting device TML. The machine's software enables bidirectional communication between the S1 and P4. The TML, equipped with two cartesian manipulators, automatically picks up parts produced by the laser/punching machine and transfers them inline to the bending machine. It is equally capable of stacking and removing pure punch-laser parts from the system. The P4 offers a maximum bending length of up to 3,100 millimeters (approx. 122 inches) and a maximum bending height of up to 254 millimeters (approx. 10 inches). It is also equipped with an automatically adjustable hold-down clamp that adjusts the bending tool's length automatically and in parallel with main operation time to the size of the part being produced, eliminating machine downtime or the need for manual retooling.

Heart of Production

The S1+P4, alongside several profile processing centers, is the new centerpiece of production and brings numerous advantages for Knott, Bühler, and their team: thanks to improved waste optimization compared to before, less scrap is generated. Additionally, production can now be done on a day-by-day basis, which has reduced material inventory. Production speed has increased significantly, and the quality of the laser cut is so high that no reworking, as was previously required when the parts were purely punched, is necessary. "A major advantage for us is that we now only have one machine through which everything runs in one go. We no longer have manual interfaces between cutting, punching, and bending," Bühler emphasizes. A particularly essential feature for the company is the cut function of the P4. It allows narrow and delicate bent parts or profiles to be processed almost directly from nesting and then sequentially bent and cut out. As individual parts, these would otherwise not be manufacturable in an automated way due to their small dimensions. Thanks to improved manufacturing tolerances, the components now fit together more precisely, which has significantly simplified final assembly.

Since June 2025, a B3 press brake from Salvagnini has also complemented production. With its particularly efficient and precise hybrid drive for adaptive bending (precision is achieved through electric servo drives, while power is provided hydraulically), it handles the individual bending tasks that cannot be performed on the P4. The P-PB-CXN software is used for the direct connection between the bending center and the press brake, automating the loading of the B3 program at the end of the bending cycle on the bending center. This solution not only increases the productivity of the system but also reduces the risk of errors by assigning operators the task of starting the program, which has already been automatically loaded. A perfect combination of efficiency and reliability to optimize the production flow.

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