• 50年前，Ludwig Esser Metallbau GmbH购买了第一批LVD机床。如今，为了提高生产率、产能和竞争力，该公司再次投资了两台高科技 LVD 光纤激光切割系统。

The company Ludwig Esser has been in Euskirchen for more than 120 years. We manufacture at two locations in Euskirchen with approximately 50 employees. In an 8,000 square metre space we produce sheet metal parts, mainly for mechanical engineering, apparatus construction, plant construction and conveyor technology. We specialise in manufacturing large components up to 12 metres in length. 

The laser cutting system we installed is aligned to that length. In addition, we perform water jet cutting up to 3 x 10 m and we bend profiles. We also have five press brakes, with 2.5 to 12 m bending length, and a maximum of 20,000 kN bending force. We bend steel parts of 12 m long and about 2.5 mm thick. We are now the second generation to have been working with LVD, for some 50 years now. My father purchased the first two machines from LVD in 1971 and last year we decided to switch our complete laser production from CO2 to fibre laser. We spoke to various manufacturers. We took a very close look at the market and commissioned the same parts from all suppliers. We compared the results and chose LVD because LVD offers a very good combination for us in the form of the newly developed Taurus and the automated Phoenix machine. 

When making the purchase decision we received very good support from LVD Germany and at the same time had a direct connection to the factory in Belgium where detailed technical questions were clarified. We had very close exchanges with contacts at both offices. For us, the interesting thing about what LVD had to offer was the combination of two fundamentally very different machine concepts: 

  • the movable gantry system of Taurus for cutting very large sheets,
  • and the automated Phoenix to which we added a load and unload system, which in turn is so flexible that we can also process individual sheets. 

We need a laser cutting system with fibre laser cutting technology able to cut formats up to at least 3 x 12 m. LVD offered us a Taurus laser with movable gantry featuring a cutting table that is able to accommodate several sheets. The Taurus was a completely new concept from LVD. We essentially bought a black box because we had not seen the machine in its final form at the time of the purchase as it was the first of its kind. 

This means we placed a lot of trust in LVD and we are extremely satisfied with the machine they delivered. 

The Taurus also lets us make bevel cuts because the cutting head can be tilted to a maximum of 45 degrees in all directions. The difference between fibre and CO2 laser cutting technology is that the fibre laser has a much higher cutting speed, giving us a much higher output. Secondly, we have much better energy efficiency. When compared to the old CO2 systems, depending on the material and sheet thickness, we cut up to twice as fast with the fibre laser. Because of our range of parts and part dimensions, we don't see a need for additional automation. With the automated Phoenix we have achieved all that is currently considered possible. 

There is still an option to integrate a warehouse system but that's not planned at the moment. We are a subcontractor for mechanical engineering firms and need to be very flexible and able to react quickly. That is why we need quick access to service and close cooperation with the machine manufacturer in the event of a disruption. With LVD, as a family-run company, we saw that as guaranteed.