Carbide specialist CERATIZIT is synonymous with "hard material matters". Ashwani Sareen, Managing Director, CERATIZIT India, responded to the IPF Questionnaire. Excerpts from the e-interview.

What are the products that you offer?

We manufacture metal cutting tools, wear parts and wood and stone working tools. We also have total metal working solutions for turning, milling, drilling, parting, grooving, threading operations on CNC as well as conventional machines. Innovative products for metal cutting is the trademark of CERATIZIT.

Apart from these, we also manufacture special inserts for customer specific and application specific machining solution. Cold heading pellets are produced in our plant. These pellets are use mainly in the fasteners industry.

What are the applications?

The main applications in which our products are used are:

• Turning
• Milling
• Drilling
• Parting
• Grooving, and
• Threading

We also provide specialised solutions in:

• Bar peeling
• Roll turning
• Bearings, and
• Alloy wheels, etc

CERATIZIT India has a host of customers in almost all industrial segments. Our cutting tools segment caters to the needs of the following industries:

• Automobile
• Turbine
• Oil industry
• Railways, and
• Aerospace

Industries serviced by our wear parts division are:

• Tool makers
• Fasteners, and
• Wood and Stone

Some of our main customers from the automotive industry are Tata Motors, Hyundai Motors, Ashok Leyland, Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata Cummins, Maruti, their ancillaries, and other auto component manufacturers. Other important customers are ordnance factories, steel plants, BHEL units, general engineering and the Indian Railways.

Why should the customer opt for these?

We are an ISO 9001:2008 and OHSAS 18001 certified company and have a modern manufacturing facility, which in terms of technology is at par with CERATIZIT Europe with spray robotised Dorst presser, de-waxing and sintering furnace, CNC grinders, and a state-of-the-art chemical vapour deposition (CVD) coating plant. In fact, CERATIZIT India is one of the very few companies in India, which has complete capability to manufacture coated inserts from raw powder.

Our processes have been experimented with and streamlined by experts at our research facilities in Austria and Luxembourg over the years. So our customers get the best quality, world class products at competitive prices.

Recently, we also acquired G?nther Wirth (GW) Precision Tools India Pvt Ltd. GW manufactures the entire range of high performance solid carbide drills, end mills and reamers in standard and special custom designs. These tools offer some of the highest cutting parameters in metal cutting, thereby lowering cycle time and increasing productivity.

With the acquisition of GW, we can now provide our customers with complete solution for their machining needs, making us a one-stop-shop for all metal cutting solutions.

How strong/effective is the after sales service?

We have a strong team of 50+well qualified and well trained sales force deployed throughout the country at strategic locations. All are engineering graduates from top universities in our country. Apart from them we also have a strong channel of dealers, who in turn have employed engineers of their own.

This network of Sales Engineers, Dealers and Dealer Sales Engineers is the backbone of our after sales service. They are in constant touch with our customers and with the head office thus maintaining a smooth flow of information between us and the end user.

We also have a designated Technical Services team, which provides support to our sales force in their day to day activities and apart from that, also provide solutions for certain special applications apart from our standard programs. We have a Segment Solutions team, formed specifically for the purpose of catering to the needs of customers in certain key segments like automobile, aerospace, power, bearing, oil, etc.

In a recent customer satisfaction survey that was conducted by us, it has been found out that more than 90 per cent of our customers perceive our after sales services to be good or excellent. All measures are taken to maintain this level of service quality and to improve upon it.

What is the company's history?

CERATIZIT India Pvt is a 100 per cent subsidiary of CERATIZIT S.?.r.L Luxembourg. The company started operations in the year 1997. It now has more than 200 employees and 4 sales offices located at Gurgaon, Pune, Bangalore and Chennai. The head office and works are based at Kolkata and it is from here that we service the needs of all of our customers, nationwide.

What breakthrough product launch has made a significant difference in the recent past?

Our MaxiMill 273 milling cutters with OAKU inserts have been game changers, in face milling operations.

The inserts have a patented octagonal design with the following unique features:

• 16 usable cutting edges
• Integrated cutting edge
• Stable corner angle of 135?
• Negative insert with positive effect, and
• 100 per cent CERATIZIT technology

The MaxiMill 273 milling cutter also has many unique features like:

• CERATIZIT patented tool coating for increased durability
• Compact design, and
• Optimised position for reduced vibration and noise and for reduced power consumption

How is the present business environment? What are the future plans?

The last 2 years have been quite sluggish for the Indian economy. This has taken its toll on the manufacturing sector of our country as well. Out of the lot, the main hit was taken by the automotive industry to which we are a main supplier. When the automotive industry feels the crunch, so do we. But this lean period has given us time to retrospect and make changes in the way things have been done for many years. Now through process rationalisation and improved machinery we have further strengthened our production processes and are confident of facing the challenges that this new financial year brings us.

NUM to Demonstrate CNC Advances at IMTS 2014

Exciting new developments in machine tool CNC hardware and software technology will be demonstrated by NUM at IMTS 2014 (8-13 September, Booth E-5135, East Building at McCormick Place, Chicago). Highlights will include a highly cost-effective dual channel CNC kernel for designers of small to medium size machines with up to five axes, a functional safety architecture that can easily be scaled to suit any type of machine, and new grinding software for complex geometry tools.

Forming the latest addition to NUM's market-leading Flexium+ CNC platform, the dual channel Flexium+ 8 CNC kernel provides an exceptionally high level of control flexibility. At any time, either CNC channel can be used to control a spindle motor and four simultaneously interpolated axes - and control can be passed on-the-fly from one channel to the other. This simplifies the design of complex machines with multiple synchronisation requirements, such as thread or gear cutters, and in many cases eliminates the need for a second CNC kernel.

NUM will also be providing software demonstrations of complete conversational and cycle solutions developed specifically for the North American market. Based on Flexium+ systems, these include solutions for gear hobbing, shaping and grinding, OD/ID grinding and metal spinning.

The functional safety architecture, known as NUMSAFE, is compatible with all NUM Flexium+ CNC systems. It provides machine builders with a highly flexible means of implementing functional safety functions and can be scaled to suit almost any type of machine tool, regardless of complexity or the number of axes. Key benefits include minimal additional hardware and wiring - the safety PLC and safety I/O modules can be contained within the same standard terminal as other elements of the control system - and simple software development using the same powerful tools that are used to commission the CNC, PLC, drives and I/O modules.

For the first time in the USA, NUM will be showing the new version of its market-leading NUMROTO tool grinding software, which now includes functions for complex geometry tools such as multi-helical end mills with variable width flute areas. In addition, the software now accommodates several new types of gash out on drills and form cutters, allowing the grinding wheel to follow the tool's ballnose- or corner-radius in order to create a defined rake angle along the radius and the gash out. The software's integrated automatic product documentation function has also been enhanced so that it can import detailed views from the Flexium 3D simulator, to create extremely realistic drawings of the tool.