A three-dimensional core structure made from natural fibers is locked firmly in place between two cover layers, which are point-milled and glued at the attachment points. Lisocore^® uses between 30 and 50 percent less material, and is up to 70 percent lighter, than conventional composite wood panels. The material’s special properties open up an array of applications: in furniture production, exhibition and display systems, interior fittings for ships, stage construction and transport packaging.

Lws maschinenbau GmbH, a subsidiary company, trod completely new ground with a production line for two million square meters of Lisocore^® per year. WITTENSTEIN provided valuable assistance here. The load and motion data of the various conveyor elements and gantry axes was simulated and adapted where necessary with cymex^® 5, the innovative sizing software.

Iws maschinenbau Gmbh, a subsidiary company, trod completely new ground with a production line for two million square meters of Lisocore^® per year. WITTENSTEIN provided valuable assistance here. The load and motion data of the various conveyor elements and gantry axes was simulated and adapted where necessary with cymex^® 5, the innovative sizing software. To simplify the configuration of drive trains, this software has access to a database listing around 14,000 motor versions from more than 50 different manufacturers – including Beckhoff, who were Iws maschinenbau’s choice to supply the motors. cymex^® 5 also contains more than 8000 WITTENSTEIN gearboxes and over 200 combinations of WITTENSTEIN linear systems including all technical specifications. Thanks to our software, it was possible to size the WITTENSTEIN gearboxes so that the maximum load applied to the motors is no more than 75 to 80 percent and operation is as smooth as possible. What’s more, this prevents the drive trains from coming up against their limits straight away, for example when manufacturing thicker materials.

The line drills cover layers, applies the adhesive and combines the layers with the 3D core. In the first step, a board turner takes a cover layer from a stack and sets it down on a conveyor element. The conveyor transfers the board to the next station, where the core element is inserted.

Special fine-tuning was necessary with regard to the handling design: using SAM, the simulation tool, WITTENSTEIN tested various load conditions and motions of rotary actuators with lift arms as well as motor-gearbox combinations for the Z lift. A few clicks of the mouse are then all it takes to import the result into cymex^® 5 and determine the optimal gearbox. The customer chose size 240 SPK⁺ right-angle gearboxes with an integral output stage for the lift arm because their high performance and torsional rigidity enables precise and dynamic handling of the cover layers. The two actuators for the Z axis of the board turner are equipped with power dense planetary gearboxes in the RP⁺. Their highly rigid design guarantees maximum positioning accuracy.

Two board turners are installed near the cover layer feeding station while a third flips the first cover layer so that the second layer is placed squarely over it. The two layers are then glued together and combined with the core to form sandwich boards. The conveying and positioning modules located immediately downstream of the double feeding station are each fitted with the economical entry-level model in the CP series. Gearboxes belonging to the extremely compact and power dense XP⁺ and TP⁺ series – some of them designed as rack-and-pinion systems – dominate around the flat press as well as in the gantry axes of the automatic drilling and gluing stations and the gantry palletizer. The line has 100 axes in total, every one of which is equipped with servo gearboxes from WITTENSTEIN.