Reliable drives for highly specialized rolling mills
Reference Fuhr
At a glance
Fuhr – a German company based in Steinheim, East Westphalia – is one of the world's leading machine builders active in the domain of wire rods and the associated systems. Fuhr develops and builds highly specialized wire rod mills and flexible solutions for a wide range of industrial applications. Based on technology from Innomotics, Fuhr relies on highly reliable drives that are perfectly tailored to address the application.
Where reliability is a tradition
Whether in motors, generators, cable railways, electric cars or wind turbines: Wires and the associated systems for their production represent a success factor for entire industrial sectors. The medium-sized family business can look back on more than 75 years of know-how in rolling mill and special machine construction. Over the decades, Fuhr has developed to become one of the leading partners to consumer, logistics, construction, energy, medical, automotive and textile industries. The product spectrum is based on individual components from the field of wire forming. Customers use these components in their production lines – whether for modernizing existing lines or for constructing completely new production plants. Fuhr also develops complete, turnkey solutions for its customers – customized systems that fit seamlessly into existing processes. They can also provide consulting services over the complete process: from raw material to quality optimization.
We depend on the high reliability of the complete drive system including the motors.
Volker Gerth, CEO
Reliable and maintenance-free
Guaranteed delivery capability
High system availability is also crucial for Fuhr's customers. The machines usually have to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Any downtime would lead to massive production losses, especially considering that these machine types frequently have start-up times of one day or even longer. "All the components and parts that we use must be highly reliable" states Jonas Borgolte, Head of Design at Fuhr. And the drives must be maintenance-free, as a rolling mill should be able to operate continuously for up to a year.
That is why this machine builder focuses on quality made in Germany and carefully selects its suppliers. Already in the late 1990s, Fuhr started to collaborate with Siemens* in the drive domain. And we are very satisfied with the outcome: "I can't remember a Siemens motor failing in the past 15 or 20 years," states Fuhr CEO Volker Gert. "What matters to us is that nothing has changed with the rebranding to Innomotics." For Fuhr, the high quality of Innomotics drives also means: The products meet all important requirements, can be installed in our machines just-in-time, and therefore guarantee that our plants and systems are able to be delivered. The machine builder can also rely on the scalability of the system as part of its modular solution.
Reduce costs, save CO2
Regardless of whether the rolling mills operate slowly or quickly, with low or high load: Drives should be as energy-efficient as possible. "Today, our customers already have to keep the CO2 footprint of their machines low and in the future, this will have to be reduced even further," emphasizes Volker Gerth. This is compounded by higher energy costs. "Every opportunity to save energy is highly appreciated – to say the least." This is particularly relevant as Fuhr's drive systems are 100 percent electric.
By the way, the company is currently focusing very heavily on the whole issue of renewable energy. Whether huge cable systems that go all the way from the North Sea to southern Germany, or generators in the wind energy sector that sometimes require between eight and twelve tons of copper wire. There is a significant demand to produce these products quickly, efficiently and sustainably. "Over the past two years, this has become a real success story in our special niche," states a happy CEO Volker Gerth. It would be great if Innomotics can continue to contribute to this company's success!