The vacuum lifting device places the glass panes on the roller conveyor of the glass washer
Gartner chose euroTECH when it needed to manage a larger handling project, without sourcing every single component from a different supplier.
Anyone who has attempted to manage a larger handling project without sourcing every single component from a different supplier knows: it’s a challenge. This is why Josef Gartner GmbH from Gundelfingen relies on the vacuum technology and expertise of euroTECH. Gartner, one of the world’s leading experts for glass, steel and aluminium façades, needs to load its glass panes into a glass washer and insert them into their façade elements once they are clean. The company ordered a customised comprehensive solution from euroTECH to complete this task efficiently.
Gardner, the façade expert from Gundelfingen, was founded in 1868. Since 2001, the company has been part of the Permasteelisa Group, one of the world’s largest façade engineering companies. Its latest projects included the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. Together with its customers, Gartner develops customised, unique solutions. The company does not have a standardised product catalogue. Josef Gartner GmbH provides a complete service including the design, engineering, testing, project management, manufacture, assembly and maintenance of highly complex façades.
It comes as no surprise that Gartner prefers to rely on a partner with similar characteristics for its projects. “Finding a suitable partner wasn’t easy. We wanted to carry out our entire glass manipulation project with one single company,” Dominik Glaser explains. He is responsible for the maintenance, repair, testing and new purchase of machines and plants at Gartner. “The first supplier could not offer us a steel frame. The second had steel frames, but without the required spacing between the supports. The third one was incapable of providing replacement suction frames quickly. Only euroTECH complied with our requirements in full. Together with Gartner, they successfully met all the challenges involved in the project.”
The task was to handle extremely large glass panes weighing up to 800 kilograms and very small panes weighing approximately 80 kilograms with the same device. This required a steel crane frame with as few supporting feet as possible, which needed to be located in very specific places. The first lifting device needs to lift the glass panes off the transport racks safely and place them on the roller conveyor of a glass washer. After the cleaning process, the second device needs to lift the glass panes back off the roller conveyor and insert them into the corresponding façade elements. A column guide ensures fast disc movement and easy, precise positioning of the lifting devices. Besides standardised vacuum components and lifting devices, the vacuum expert euroTECH Vertriebs GmbH also offers customer-specific comprehensive solutions. In partnership with Gartner, the company has developed a solution that has been put into operation recently. “We had very concrete ideas about the design and capabilities of our final plant. euroTECH helped us turn our vision and our needs into an actual device,” Glaser commented.
During a period of intensive communication, the two sides planned, conceptualised and developed their joint project together. Multiple departments were involved in its realisation. “Once the basic requirements were clear, my chief engineer Reiner Nufer and I drove to Gartner to get an idea of the premises and discuss all further details,” Gerhard Bossert, Project Manager at euroTECH, recounted. “Together with Mr Glasser, we spent the next weeks creating a customised solution designed to fulfil the tasks required by Gartner precisely.”
Gartner took advantage of euroTECH’s far-reaching experience: the vacuum specialist had already built handling devices for other major companies in the glass industry. The new device was intended to make the assembly workers’ tasks easier and improve occupational safety and handling speeds. “The new device by euroTECH is superior to our old method of handling glass in almost every way. We used to work with regular glass suction devices and a ceiling crane. The simpler, safer and faster handling of the glass panes has sped up our cycle times considerably,” Glaser reported. “Everything has been working quite smoothly since the start-up. We have got positive feedback from all employees working with the new device. I am proud of that.” The successful project certainly constitutes a solid foundation for a productive future partnership of the two companies.