Extrusion International 1-2025

35 Extrusion International 1/2025 THERMOFORMING – CASE STUDY Success with Machined Thermoformed Parts and Fully Assembled Components The swissplast group has quickly grown by focusing on high-quality thermoformed parts and a strong emphasis on service, quality, and delivery speed. In addition to thermoforming itself, key success factors include the machining and assembly of parts. The company relies on machining centers from HG GRIMME SysTech, among others, due to their quality, precision, and dynamics. The similar mentality of the two family-owned businesses also plays a role, as demonstrated at the Gotha site. “We combine comprehensive service with a high lev- el of machining and assembly – and all of this at high speed,” summarizes Ninyan Bieri, COO of the swissplast group, the company’s promise. The company, led by his father Barac S. Bieri, specializes in functional, design- oriented components and workpiece carriers made of all types of thermoplastic materials. Its range of services extends from design and thermoforming to the machin- ing of parts and the assembly of entire components. This includes many body and interior parts, some in Class-A quality, for motorhomes, semi-trailers, buses, and trains, among others. Customers also come from plant and mechanical engineering, the construction and packaging industries, medical technology, and heating system manufacturing. For the latter, swissplast sup- plies, for example, covers for heat pumps and boilers. “The machining of thermoformed parts is a very im- portant part of our range of services,” emphasizes Bieri. The group manufactures trays and workpiece carriers as well as technical parts in roughly equal proportions. Almost 90 percent of the latter are milled. “Since milling and drilling play such a large role, we at swissplast have also relied on machining centers from HG GRIMME Sys- Tech for many years.” Large and Voluminous Thermoformed Parts Manufactured in Gotha The approximately 200 employees of the Swiss group of companies are spread across four locations: in Go- tha, Thuringia; Diedorf and Ichenhausen in Bavaria; and at the Swiss company headquarters in Sargans. Although the legally independent companies have different strengths and pro les, they work closely to - gether. The focus is on thermoforming pre-con gured purchased sheet material. It consists mainly of acrylo- nitrile butadiene styrene copolymer (ABS), polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), and polystyrene (PS) – if pos- sible, with a high recycled content – and is processed in batch sizes between 10 and 250 pieces. Only in the Diedorf plant is the focus on lm production for tech - nical packaging. Ninyan Bieri, COO swissplast group (left), and Martin Sombrowski, Sales Manager Europe at HG GRIMME SysTech (All photos: HG GRIMME SysTech) In use since 2018: The RT-F 1400 5-axis CNC rotary table milling machine for small workpieces