Stair construction

Wood pro­ces­sing has a long tra­di­ti­on in the den­se­ly woo­ded Erz­ge­bir­ge and the peo­p­le the­re have per­fec­ted their work­man­ship for gene­ra­ti­ons. Die­tel Trep­pen­bau feel a strong com­mit­ment to this tra­di­ti­on, too. Many years ago, the com­pa­ny adopted our CNC-pro­ces­sing tech­no­lo­gy, thus updating pro­duc­tion for the future.

Ammann stair­ca­se manu­fac­to­ry had bought one of our CNC-machi­ning cen­tres; but its rou­te into the pro­duc­tion faci­li­ties was bar­red by a sto­rage buil­ding. How to resol­ve this situa­ti­on? Seven hours later — a truck-moun­ted cra­ne of 150 metric tons with 50 metric tons of bal­last to pro­vi­de a coun­ter­ba­lan­ce, and the unit’s being lifted through the air for 22 met­res — the machi­ne had arri­ved in its future position. 

„The craft­sman­ship of a manu­fac­to­ry com­bi­ned with the effi­ci­en­cy of modern mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring and com­pu­ter tech­no­lo­gy,” this is how Mey­er & Gra­ve sees its­elf. The pre­mi­um stair­ca­ses from solid wood are always indi­vi­du­al­ly cus­to­mi­sed to the cli­ents‘ wis­hes and requi­re­ments. As top qua­li­ty is of importance for them, the use of modern machi­nery is a must.

The func­tion of a stair­ca­se is a prac­ti­cal and at the same time a deco­ra­ti­ve one. Whe­re crea­ti­vi­ty is con­cer­ned, the limits of indi­vi­dua­lism seem to be rea­ched — not so in the opi­ni­on of Dutch­man Frans Son­nem­ans. His company’s spe­cial­ty are stair­ca­ses made from extra­va­gant mate­ri­als and varia­ti­ons regar­ding the type, style and design of a staircase.

With about 15,000 pre­fab hou­ses, Gus­sek Haus is among the most renow­ned manu­fac­tu­r­ers in Ger­ma­ny. A VISION-II-ST Sprint has been in use sin­ce 2013, the intel­li­gent con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on of which dra­sti­cal­ly redu­ces tool chan­ging times and has thus made the line the core of stair­ca­se manufacturing

If someone in Switz­er­land wants to have an extra­or­di­na­ry stair­ca­se, he will ine­vi­ta­b­ly come across the crea­ti­ve minds of Treppenbau.ch AG. Their stair­ca­se con­s­truc­tions start at a point, whe­re others lea­ve off becau­se it gets too com­pli­ca­ted. „The inno­va­ti­ve gene of our employees when deal­ing with CNC-tech­no­lo­gy distin­gu­is­hes us from our competitors.“

With gre­at effort, Ste­fan Nos and his son Bene­dikt used to make all kinds of stairs with exo­tic machi­nes. Now they have drawn a line and ban­ned not only the strin­ger mil­ling machi­ne for mil­ling steps, but also other machi­nes from the workshop.

Juhan Viise, Mana­ging Direc­tor of the Aru Grupp, set hims­elf the goal in 2021 of deve­lo­ping his com­pa­ny into the most modern, ful­ly auto­ma­ted stair­ca­se plant in the who­le of Euro­pe over the next few years. Curr­ent­ly, they ope­ra­te a log house and a glu­lam com­po­nent plant but also pro­du­ce high-qua­li­ty pro­ducts from solid wood, which they export on a glo­bal scale.

Dri­ven by the pas­si­on to crea­te incom­pa­ra­ble one-offs, Diehl has beco­me a sym­bol for exclu­si­ve sta­ir con­s­truc­tions. It can be an exci­ting chall­enge when one CNC machi­ne is to be repla­ced by ano­ther. Howe­ver, the elec­tri­cal power of the new one could have cau­sed parts of Frank­furt to go dark for a short time.

This line revo­lu­tio­ni­s­es the cut­ting and com­ple­te pro­ces­sing of lar­ge woo­den posts/beams up to 7,000 mm in length. It is far-sigh­ted to manu­fac­tu­re newel posts sepa­ra­te­ly from other stair­ca­se com­pon­ents, espe­ci­al­ly so in indus­tri­al stair­ca­se pro­duc­tion. The PBZ 6S-7000 saves valuable pro­duc­tion time on other machi­nes and thus redu­ces costs.

„If we build two iden­ti­cal stair­ca­ses it is only becau­se we need two of a kind in the same buil­ding“. Apart from spa­cious sto­rage are­as, their shop flo­or is abo­ve all cha­rac­te­ri­sed by tech­ni­cal­ly sophisti­ca­ted machi­nery. The­re you find two 5‑axes machi­ning cen­tres, each more than six met­res in length, of VISION type with gan­try dri­ve, which have been sup­pli­ed by the machi­ne buil­der Reichenbacher.

A 5‑axis main spind­le and three addi­tio­nal mil­ling units on the same sup­port – this dis­tri­bu­tes the work in stair­ca­se con­s­truc­tion to spe­ci­fi­cal­ly desi­gned units, redu­ces tool chan­ge times and saves a total of 20 per­cent time. Like the gim­bal-moun­ted 5‑axis main spind­le, the units are moun­ted on the Y‑support.

Com­pa­nies in indus­try and trade face a major chall­enge when it comes to auto­ma­ti­on. After all, machi­nes alo­ne are not enough – in order to gua­ran­tee con­sis­t­ent­ly high pro­duct qua­li­ty, intel­li­gent soft­ware must be used so that employees can ope­ra­te machi­nes and car­ry out pro­gramming after a short trai­ning period.

5‑axis machi­ning cen­ters are also beco­ming incre­asing­ly popu­lar in the hand­craft sec­tor. Accor­din­gly, Rei­chen­ba­cher is focu­sing its pre­sence at the Holz-Hand­werk on this tech­no­lo­gy. The focus will be on a high-end “Artis X6 Sprint” machi­ne spe­ci­al­ly equip­ped for stair­ca­se construction.

Wort­mann Mas­siv­holz­trep­pen GmbH is a fle­xi­ble sup­pli­er for car­pen­ters and joi­n­ers. The Sau­er­land-based com­pa­ny reli­es on high-per­for­mance CNC tech­no­lo­gy and pro­vi­des its part­ners with com­pre­hen­si­ve sup­port from plan­ning to assem­bly. The five-axis machi­ning cen­ter Rei­chen­ba­cher “Visi­on” has been in use sin­ce 2013.