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Editorial

by Alexander Attenberger

Dear reader,

I am pleased to intruduce to you Rainer Hansjürgens, a new member of the Executive Board. He has led the Large Parts Machining Systems (LPMS) business unit since November 2022 and has learned everthing in the machine tool industry from the ground to the top – a characteristic that distinguishes many of the Starrag executives.

While reading our new customer magazine Star, I was struck by how often Starrag is about precision and tradition: One example of “lived precision” is today’s SIP product range, which recently celebrated its 160th anniversary and to which the Geneva Office for Cultural Heritage and Sites dedicated a special exhibition in the Museum of the History of Science.

High precision also shaped the machining centres from the 50-year-old Bumotec product range which, together with SIP, forms the Ultra Precision Machining Centers business unit. Initially, it was mainly the watchmaking and luxury industries that worked with the high-precision machines, but the Starrag product range now has also captured new markets such as medical technology.

The struggle for fractions of a millimetre is different in every product range: For 30 years, Heckert, for example, has been relying on a special form of work spindle: I refer to the NC quill, with which deeper surfaces and bores can be machined with high precision using short standard tools without vibration.

Heckert demonstrates how well this can be achieved at the Chemnitz measuring centre, which fulfils the strict specifications of German standard VDI 2627 and whose services can also be used by Starrag customers. The four ZEISS measuring machines and programming stations allow you to measure ghost layers for checking product lines – with an accuracy of up to 0.7 micrometres.

The Starrag headquarters in Rorschacherberg has been developing and manufacturing motor and gear spindles in-house since 1920. This traditional precision work is also impressive: According to current measurement results, the axial shaft displacement is less than ten micrometers over the entire speed range.

But where are these remarkable achievements currently in demand? In the Far East. One hundred Starrag machine tools have been received by wind turbine manufacturers in China since 2006. The two most important decision criterias being productivity and precision.

I hope you enjoy reading the Star 01–2023 issue and our “lived precision” in all areas.

Best wishes,
Alexander Attenberger