Eckold
| Eckold GmbH & Co. KG | |
|---|---|
| legal form | GmbH & Co. KG |
| founding | 1948 (originally founded in Wernigerode in 1936) |
| Seat | St. Andreasberg |
| management | Rainer Beyer,
Annegret Eckold, Ralf Pilgrim |
| Number of employees | 150 |
| sales | EUR 22 million (2018) |
| Branch | mechanical engineering |
| Website | www.eckold.de |
The Eckold GmbH & Co. KG is a company based in St. Andreasberg in the Harz . It is in the field of cold forming operations worldwide and provides tools, machinery and equipment for forming , joining and cutting of metal sheets and profiles ago. The turnover in 2018 was around 22 million euros. The company has over 150 employees in 2019.
history
The later company founder Walter Eckold (1895 - 1963) worked for 19 years as a foreman, senior master and production engineer at Junkers Flugzeugwerk AG in Dessau . At Junkers, Walter Eckold played a major role in the invention of one-man riveting , also known as blind riveting , as well as in tools for upsetting sheet metal and profiles. He was in charge of fixture construction. Here are devices and gauges designed and manufactured.
With the establishment of his own company in Wernigerode in 1936 and from 1938 also in the Seehausen branch , he developed his own upsetting machines, which were primarily used in the aircraft industry. A patent was applied for in 1941 for a “machine for non-cutting shaping of hand-controlled sheet metal or profiles”; However, due to the interruption of the work of the patent office due to the war, it was not issued until 1958. Conveyors in lightweight steel construction for use in agriculture, the construction industry and in freight and luggage transport were also produced.
During the Second World War , the company supplied devices and gauges to almost all German aircraft manufacturers. In 1945 there were around 800 employees, including foreign workers. After the end of the war, the company switched to civilian products. After the works were expropriated by the Soviet occupying power in 1948, Walter Eckold fled to the West and established his new company in 1948 in St. Andreasberg in the Harz Mountains in the company buildings of a former armaments factory of the Hoesch Group.
Walter Eckold owned patents for the tools and machines he developed for the non-cutting cold forming of sheet metal and profiles. From 1949 to 1950, he tested and improved his universal tools and machines on protective hoods, fenders and roofs for tractors (brands WOTRAK and OBERHARZ). At the beginning of 1950, serial production for universal sheet metal and profile deformation began. The products were sold under the names Eckold Kraftformer distributed Eckold Handformer and Eckold Elastikformer, they are still known and commercially available under the name.
In 1957 Walter Eckold founded W. Eckold AG in Chur / Switzerland. This company had the task of building up exports, initially to Italy, Yugoslavia, Switzerland and Austria. Today Eckold AG is legally independent, but close cooperation is maintained.
In 1961 his sons Gerd-Jürgen (* 1928) and Hartmut (* 1936) joined the oHG as partners. Walter Eckold died in 1963 at the age of 68. His sons now also take over the management. At the beginning of the 1970s, Eckold products were already being exported to more than 90 countries around the world.
The production program was constantly expanded. From 1975 the company also has hydraulically operated, mobile tools (Mobilformer) developed in-house in its program. In 1977 the sister company, Eckold-Biegetechnik GmbH & Co. KG, was founded as a service company. Profiles made of steel and aluminum are bent for the commercial vehicle sector and wagon construction. Over the decades, sales companies were established in Great Britain, France, the Czech Republic, Japan and Hungary.
In 1981, at the 4th European machine tool exhibition in Hanover with the Eckold clinching the hitherto novel for the European market Joining presented. Here, sheets are permanently connected to one another without any thermal influence on the joint. In the course of the adoption of the designation enforcement joining as a generic term in the German set of standards , the name was changed to Eckold-Druckfügen (at that time patented). In order to correspond to the usage of the users later, the term pressure joining was internationalized in 1998 and renamed to clinching . Clinching technology is used today in all sheet metal processing industries up to and including the automotive industry.
In 1999 the managing partner Gerd-Jürgen Eckold died. The company shares were transferred to his children Annegret Eckold, Hans-Henning Eckold and Claus-Peter Eckold, who continue the company.
From 1980, further Eckold sales companies were founded worldwide:
- Eckold Ltd., Coventry , Great Britain
- Eckold Kft., Győr , Hungary
- Eckold & Vavrouch spol. s ro, Brno , Czech Republic
- Eckold Japan Co. Ltd., Funabashi City, Japan
- Eckold Corporation, Duluth , USA
Eckold GmbH & Co. KG today has an export share of 40% and delivers its products to more than 100 countries around the world.
Today's business areas and products
Eckold designs and manufactures tools, machines and systems for the cold forming of sheet metal and profiles for its customers in the automotive industry , aircraft construction and the entire sheet metal processing industry . The technologies offered include clinching , punching , punch riveting , forming , embossing , embossing punching, folding and wheel arch flanging.
Clinching:
- mobile and stationary devices, also for automated operation and robot use
- individual production of clinching pliers, clinching brackets, clinching devices, clinching devices and clinching systems
Punching:
- automated punching devices up to mobile and manually guided punching tools
Self-piercing rivets:
- automated punch riveting systems
Forming sheet metal, tubes and profiles without the influence of heat ( upsetting , stretching , reshaping, clamping, crowning , smoothing , straightening , folding, punching , notching , bending , roller stretching)
- Power shaper
- Hand shaper
- Roller stretching machines
Embossing / stamping:
- mobile devices, for installation in devices or for handling on industrial robots
- complete plant systems and devices
- Dome embossing
Fold:
- Seam locks on vehicle add-on parts
Wheel arch flanging:
- Devices for forming work on two- or single-layer pre-bent sheet metal flanges in the wheel house area (automobile construction)
Regenerative energy generation
The energy required is generated by two of their own Francis turbines, which are operated by the water from the Sperrlutter as the outgrowth of the Rehberger Graben ( Upper Harz water shelf ). The drinking water supply is secured by its own source.
literature
- Hartmut Eckold: Master years, memories of the entrepreneur Walter Eckold until 1948. 2nd edition. Self-published by Hartmut Eckold, Haldenstein / Switzerland, 2011, ISBN 978-3-033-02915-6 .
- Hartmut Eckold: Sperrluttertal, memories of the entrepreneur Walter Eckold. Second part 1948 - 1963. Self-published by Hartmut Eckold, Haldenstein / Switzerland 2017, ISBN 978-3-03306152-1 .
- Gerhard Oehler: Cutting, punching and drawing tools. Springer-Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg, 1973, ISBN 978-3-642-97498-4 .
- William H. Longyard: Metalshaping: The lost sheet metal machines Vol. 7 . Private Publisher, USA, 2018, ISBN 978-0-578-20229-7 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Patent application DE969993: Machine for non-cutting shaping of hand-controlled metal sheets or profiles. Registered September 20, 1941, published August 7, 1958, applicant: Walter Eckold, inventor: Walter Eckold (business process; online at espacenet.com ).
- ↑ Klaus Neitmann and Jochen Laufer, edited by Klaus Jochen Arnold on behalf of the Brandenburg State Main Archives and the Center for Contemporary Historical Research (eds.): Dismantling in the Soviet Occupation Zone and in Berlin 1945 to 1948 . BWV Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-8305-1899-0 , pp. 602 .
- ↑ Klaus Herrmann: Tractors in Germany - Companies and Manufacturers from 1907 to the present day . VerlagUnion Agrar, 2000, ISBN 978-3-7690-0530-1 .
- ↑ Patent application EP0077932: Apparatus for making a riveted joint of metal sheets. Registered on September 30, 1982, published on December 27, 1984, applicant: Eckold GmbH & Co. KG, inventors: Hans Maass and Gerd-Jürgen Eckold, (business process; online at espacenet.com ).
- ↑ Marisa Müller: Built close to the water. Factor magazine, accessed September 16, 2019 .