MILESTONES IN PLASTICS TECHNOLOGY
The idea of optimizing the Zimmer Group‘s in-house products and manufacturing them more efficiently led to the creation of Zimmer GmbH Kunststofftechnik in 2007. Equipped with its own toolmaking department, the company produces elastomer, plastic and metal components (MIM process) using various process technologies. In addition, thanks to the group-internal support of the Zimmer Group and its many years of experience in automation technology, the company offers a wide range of options – from in-house process automation to fully automated assembly of components tailored to customers‘ individual needs.
With these comprehensive options based on the principle of „everything from a single source“, Zimmer GmbH Kunststofftechnik has also made a name for itself nationwide and now mainly serves external customers – from the idea to the finished product.
MILESTONES DAMPING TECHNOLOGY
In 1999, a completely new business segment brought the inquiry of a renowned furniture fittings manufacturer. Enthused by Zimmer‘s high-quality and robust industrial shock absorbers, the company wanted to incorporate this technology into its guide rails for kitchen drawers – but made of plastic in large quantities and at the lowest possible cost. Even in the early years, the company broke the sound barrier of one million units in production – supported by the in-house automation know-how.
Today, Zimmer GmbH Daempfungssysteme with its Soft Close products is one of the world market leaders in the field of damping technology and supplies almost all major hardware and furniture manufacturers. Every year, around 90 million dampers leave the highly automated production facilities of the Zimmer Group in Rheinau.
MILESTONES HUMAN-ROBOT COLLABORATION
The Zimmer Group is one of the first manufacturers in the world to launch grippers for human-robot collaboration (HRC) in 2015. This innovation was honored with the Handling Award in the same year. The company now has the largest portfolio of DGUV-certified HRC grippers according to the protection principles of ISO / TS 15066 (HRC standard) worldwide.
Zimmer offers a wide variety of modules such as tool changers, axis compensation modules, rotary distributors and wireless LAN data transmission for „End of Arm Tooling“. Using dedicated apps that are integrated into the robot controller, a Zimmer user interface can be opened that makes programming the gripper child‘s play.
MILESTONES GEP5000IL
With the development of the GEP5000IL series, further standards were set. The mechatronic grippers, available since 2016, correspond to the previous commercially available pneumatically operated grippers in terms of volume, force as well as force / torque absorption.
Equipped with the IO-Link communication module, this development also offers the user numerous additional options such as the use of predefined motion profiles or extended diagnostics for predictive maintenance.
