UNEX invests into the Moravské železárny

Uničov, 7 July 2008

This year, the UNEX engineering-metallurgical group will invest an amount of almost a quarter of a billion Czech crowns into new technologies in their subsidiary company, Moravské železárny (based in Olomouc). This is the most extensive investment in the company's recent history.

While in past years the investments were directed mainly into the area of ecology - among other things, Moravské železárny meets the strictest emission limits and other ecological requirements stated by law - this year's investment focuses on the renewal, development and modernization of production, its improvement and making it more effective using the most up-to-date available technologies and new findings of science and research.

The worldwide decrease in interest in fittings, which used to be the leading production article in the history of Moravské železárny, resulted in changes in the production programme, which now focuses on more complex and more elaborate castings for various segments of the market: from simple, unlaboured castings for civil engineering and for heating engineering, to technologically very demanding castings for the automotive industry. Thanks to this, products of Moravské železárny can be found for instance in vehicles made by Mercedes-Benz.

This change of production required reorganization of the machine shop. Some of the single-purpose machines used for tooling fittings were replaced with modern, very effective tooling machines positioned around multi-axes tooling centres by DECKEL. Thanks to this, Moravské železárny now offer delivery of a final product inclusive of the tooling of castings and forged pieces. The total investments into the modernization were 25 million crowns and it is not yet final, a plan is being prepared for extension of the machine shop and for obtaining other new modern tooling machines.

One part of the machine shop is a specialized measuring work station equipped with a top-quality 3D co-ordinate measuring tool by Carl Zeiss, with the help of which it is possible to measure very complex shapes with a precision to a thousandth of a millimetre. This precision is required mainly by the customers from the automotive industry, but this work station will also be used for check-ups during the production of their own die plate and model appliances.

Another investment of 50 million crowns was made into the forging shop where a new forging press was installed. A part of this press is a modern furnace for pre-heating forged material, ensuring a better quality of the warming, and thus a better quality of the forged pieces. A similar modern furnace is to be installed on the current forging press in the coming months.

In relation to the change in technology, a team of construction engineers was formed, the goal of which is to prepare the technologies for tooling and to program the tooling machines. The team specialists, with the use of the newest software devote their time to the issue of modelling the forging with the aim of optimizing the production, minimizing the time needed for the preparation of the quotation and the offer to the customer, and ensuring the highest possible quality of products made in the forge shop. Investments into the equipment used by the team of constructors, among other things software by Autodesk and Dassault Systems, amount to 4 million crowns.

There is one more modernization worth 100 million crowns still planned for this year, the aim of which is to improve the quality of the production and to extend the production assortment in the foundry shop, specifically in the moulding shop and the melting shop.