Efficient machining of plastic materials – the decisive factor in window and external door construction

Leitz presents its expanded tool program for plastic and aluminium windows and external doors for the first time at the Nuremberg trade fair. Here Leitz emphasizes its special position as the only manufac-turer worldwide with a full range of standard and special manufacture tools developed and produced in-house. Coinciding with the fair Leitz will launch its 96 page tooling catalogue “The Leitz complete range of products for professional production of plastic and aluminium windows and external doors“.
 
Tendencies in processing aluminium and plastics
 
Plastics are dominating as a frame material in the growing markets of Eastern Europe and China. Currently more than half the manufactured windows are of plastic; in Russia the percentage is even higher. But, not only is the number of the manufactured plastic windows in-creasing, but also the requirements on these materials. The use of plastic profiles with a fibre reinforced core and abrasive material com-ponents is increasing. Window and external door manufacturers place increasingly high demands on hard-wearing finishes and ask for unique colours for their plastic windows. These new features for the window profiles need to be considered during processing. If conven-tional tooling is used to process these innovative window materials production costs are increased. Only materials that matches the tool-ing and tooling parameters achieve the optimum quality, profitability and production reliability. Leitz provides such working materials and customer specific tools based on a long experience of sawing, boring, routing and finishing plastic window profiles.
 
WIGO: The Leitz brand for plastic and aluminium processing
 
Producing plastic or aluminium quality windows poses challenges for the tooling manufacturer. The increasing aesthetic and thermal insulation re-quirements lead to a mix of materials with which many tools cannot cope. As batch sizes become smaller more flexible production processes are necessary. Modern plastic window profiles place high demands on the cut quality and lifetime of circular sawblades because of the high quality surface coatings and fibre reinforced plastic material. The new diamond tipped crosscut sawblade meets these high demands when machining fibre rein-forced plastic profiles and with an excellent cut quality when splitting the profile and seal. Results from trials show this sawblade is more effective after 2,000 cuts than a tungsten carbide tipped sawblade and has a 40 times longer performance time. With coated tools the spiral roughing/finishing Marathon router cutter used to machine plastic and aluminium window profiles has a performance many times that of an uncoated tool plus a significantly improved quality of cut. Higher feed speeds are possible than with conventional roughing cutters and the coated spiral roughing finishing router cutter is characterised by quiet running. Corner cleaning knives to finish the weld seams complete the new tool program.
 
Leitz – a partner for high quality wooden windows and external doors for over 100 years