Durable, hygienic, easy to clean – stainless steel is perfect when cleanliness is important. In the medical and pharmaceutical sectors and in food processing, including catering, surface treatment is also essential.
© Vogel-Bauer
Vogel-Bauer Edelstahl GmbH & Co. KG from Solingen has developed a special hygienic finish for stainless steel strips, sheets and blanks. The special feature: the center roughness value Ra, which is individually specified by the customer, is to be maintained uniformly and very precisely over the entire length and width of the strip and sheet. This guarantees optimum hygiene properties for all product surfaces processed in this way.
Austenitic stainless steel grades are primarily used for hygienic finishing in the food and pharmaceutical industries. These can be easily welded during further processing using all methods. Vogel-Bauer sources all primary material strips exclusively from European manufacturers. Another specialty: the entire stainless steel product range between 0.2 and 3.0 millimetres thick can be finished with the hygienic finish on customer request.
“In the medical and food sectors, it’s not about extremely smooth surfaces,” explains Technical Managing Director Gerald Vogel.
“Because if stainless steel surfaces are too smooth, for example by electropolishing, bacteria can really get stuck on them.”
The solution: to maintain the roughness specified by the customer in the micrometer range, so that the desired cleaning properties in particular can be guaranteed.
“Our Quality Manager Marcus Ruppel has programmed and installed camera technology that allows us to continuously check the roughness during processing. This allows us to precisely adhere to limit values.” A crucial point when it comes to uniformity and special properties – and an advantage that is increasingly appreciated by other industries.
With decades of experience and particularly powerful special machines, Vogel-Bauer ensures that the surface properties required by the customer are met very precisely.
The introduction of the latest generation of high-performance abrasives plays a decisive role in this.
“We are given fixed roughness values by our customers in the form of tolerance fields, which we are not allowed to exceed or fall below,” explains Marcus Ruppel.
“Alternatively, we continue to receive limit samples, i.e. stainless steel blanks with the required surface structures, which we analyze and use as a template for dry-abrasive machining in our company.” Consistently service-oriented: On request, Vogel-Bauer’s experts will also engage in a direct exchange with their customers and their customers’ customers, develop detailed suggestions for suitable machining processes and produce individual product samples.
The stainless steel surfaces are processed at Vogel-Bauer on modern coil-to-coil systems, in which combined processing stations for grinding and brushing are integrated.
Abrasive belts and brush fleeces are used as abrasives. “For the hygienic finish, we generally work with a duplo sanding process in which two processing stations are operated with belt sanding units,” reports Markus Feldker, Head of Production Planning at the Solingen-based stainless steel specialist. “Of course, there are also other parameters to be observed during processing, such as the contact pressure and the throughput speed,” adds plant manager Patrick Bornhalm.
The result: stainless steel belts with a surface optimized for hygiene, precisely and reliably tailored to the requirements of Vogel-Bauer customers.
On request, the belts can be coated with protective film before dispatch and can be trimmed into sheets and blanks.
© Vogel-Bauer
Background
Vogel-Bauer Edelstahl GmbH & Co KG, a family-run company based in Solingen, has been trading in and processing stainless steel products since 1945. Strips of rust-, acid- and heat-resistant steel manufactured in Europe are cut to widths and lengths in customer-specific thicknesses. Precise surface treatments perfect the stainless steel visually and technically for special requirements: from architecture, construction and industry to household and sanitary applications, pharmaceutical applications, medical technology and food processing.
“Stainless steel with service”, Vogel-Bauer’s company slogan since the 1990s, stands for the intensive examination of the requirements of buyers and their customers: throughout the entire processing chain right up to the final stainless steel product. If required, the experienced stainless steel experts provide advice during the product development phase with detailed recommendations and individually manufactured product samples. With a combination of decades of experience, enthusiasm for tailor-made solutions, state-of-the-art processing technology and the flexibility of a family-run business, Vogel-Bauer aims to impress customers in Germany and Europe with stainless steel flat products for every application.
Web: www.vogel-bauer.de