“Successful and quiet …”

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“Successful and quiet …”

… this is how the business magazine ‘brand eins’ very aptly describes the greater Bielefeld area, the home of Starrag’s Droop+Rein product range. The region with the complicated German name of Ostwestfalen-Lippe also left its mark on Rainer Hansjürgens, the new Managing Director of Starrag’s Large Parts Machining Systems (LPMS) business unit.

Learned from the ground to the top – this is how the vernacular describes managers who have worked their way up from skilled worker to being the boss. A typical example of this is Rainer Hansjürgens. The graduate engineer (born in 1970) grew up in the greater Bielefeld area, learned the trade of a machine fitter there, studied mechanical engineering at the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences and worked in many traditional mechanical engineering companies in the region.

First a Design Engineer, then Operations Manager and Business Unit Manager

“In the beginning, I set up machines myself and put them into operation at the customer’s premises,” says Rainer Hansjürgens, looking back. “After my mechanical engineering studies, I designed special machine tools, which then allowed me later to take over the entire department of special machine construction as Business Unit Manager.” His decades of production knowledge eventually led him to Gildemeister Drehmaschinen GmbH, a subsidiary of DMG Mori AG in Bielefeld, as Managing Director.

At home in large-scale mechanical engineering

For years, however, he has been passionate about products in an XXL format, which he got to know in Starrag’s Droop+Rein product range. “I was responsible for the global project management as Head of Production in Bielefeld from 2002 to 2005. So I come from large-scale mechanical engineering and therefore feel at home here,” says Rainer Hansjürgens happily.

The Westphalian has been in charge of the Large Parts Machining Systems (LPMS) business unit since November 2022. “In this area, everything revolves around Starrag’s commitment to large and very large machines,” explains the new LPMS head. “The business unit includes the Droop+Rein and Dörries product ranges in Bielefeld, Berthiez in St. Étienne, France, and the Large Parts Machining Systems division in Mönchengladbach.”

Rainer Hansjürgens, Managing Director of Starrag’s LPMS business unit

“I come from large-scale mechanical engineering and therefore feel at home here.”

But how does the long-serving expert in large-scale mechanical engineering assess the business unit? “Within the LPMS business unit, we combine many years of expertise and comprehensive know-how in turning, milling and grinding to jointly develop new machine, automation and machining concepts for customers,” says Rainer Hansjürgens. “LPMS products are the benchmark in largescale mechanical engineering in terms of performance, accuracy and long-term stability. With our application engineers, we set standards in terms of turnkey applications with excellent 24/7 service. Integrated into the Starrag Group, we thus offer our customers maximum investment and future security.”

Rainer Hansjürgens, Managing Director of Starrag’s LPMS business unit

Sometimes, successful Westphalians quite right forget how quiet they really are.

A major order from the Droop+Rein product range in Bielefeld, for example, has been on a scale beyond anything they were used to before. Going with the trend of larger wind power plants, the Danish family-owned company HACO A/S from Jutland has ordered two gigantic Droop+Rein portal machines for complete machining of rotor housings and front and stator sheets, in addition to its five Dörries vertical turning and boring mills. The gantry portal milling machine (100 kW milling head and 2 ×111 kW master/slave main drive), which weighs around 500 tons, offers a distance of 12,600 mm between the stands, and the gantry axis travels over 14,000 mm. Similar XXL dimensions also characterise the second Droop+Rein, a portal turning machine with a third linear axis. By adjusting the table, the turning diameter can be increased from 13,000 to 15,000 mm if required.