EuroWire May 2017

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Pioneering Zumbach – a glance back at the last A pioneer of on-line measurement, Zumbach manufactures a comprehensive range of non-contact, on-line measuring and control instruments. Its technology is in use worldwide and this year the company celebrates its 60 th anniversary. Whether for the cable industry, plastics, rubber or steel and metal industry, Zumbach technology is used by customers who rely on the quality and reliability of its instruments and systems.

IT was in Biel (the centre of the Swiss and worldwide watch industry), Switzerland, on 1 st May 1957. Bruno Zumbach, a young electrical engineer, not even 30, had come up with the idea of starting his own electronics company because he wanted to build something independently. Electronics were still in their infancy: relay and vacuum tubes were still the main elements. The transistor was something almost unbelievable; all integrated circuits and microprocessors, the stuff of the future. However, economic development in Switzerland at that time was good and there were many thriving machine factories in Biel. The first orders, individually or in small quantities, were received for drive systems in any kind of machine. They concerned machines for watches, optics, sterilisation and instruments of all kinds. Probably the biggest and ‘most daring’ order at the initial stage was automating the butter centre in Gossau near St Gallen (Switzerland). The whole butter production and distribution system was automated with a completely non-contact drive – at that time still a brand new technology. It was the first such drive in Switzerland. For cost reasons, all control elements, the so-called logic blocks, were developed and mass-produced at the company’s own factory. Even drives, light barriers and other items were manufactured in-house in Biel. The vision of a new kind of DC motor drive many manufacturers of cylindrical grinding machines in Biel and Switzerland who required low-vibration and finely adjustable drives. Bruno Zumbach quickly realised that this was a major market. The problem was that a satisfactory solution was not possible with the thyratron technology of the time. Zumbach’s vision involved developing and building a small and affordable “Ward Leonard” drive with a monoblock inverter and a matching DC motor and controller. This technology was only practicable and affordable for far higher drive outputs at the time. The “Ward Leonard vision” would soon become the basis of Zumbach technology for many years. At the time, there were Customised drives – the first manufactured products

▲ ▲ The first home of the company was a small, rented studio and office in an old factory building in the centre of Biel

The first production articles and growing success

company. The field was marked by new technical possibilities and thus growing numbers of competitors, who began to force down prices and margins. The machine tool industry would also soon begin its process of decline. Around 1972, a plan was developed to produce an eccentricity tester for electrical cables. In 1974, Zumbach was granted a patent for the new inductive Ex-Test 7 device, which became the first major success in what was then the new field of in-line measuring equipment. The product range – and the company – continues to grow The optical diameter measuring devices became Zumbach’s most successful products. The analogue Odc types were created around 1975, and the absolute measuring Odac® gauges from 1977. The Odac 24 was the first gauge with absolute measurement to be sold in large quantities. “Odac®” became a registered trademark; and more than 80,000 Odacs

The first production orders soon arrived. The new kind of drive proved its worth and became established. Leading grinding machine companies such as Tripet, Charmilles, Kellenberger, Tschudin, Studer and others became regular customers. As a result, hundreds if not thousands of Zumbach drives found their way to market; many of them are still in operation today. The workforce had grown to around 20 by 1964 and new premises were required. A small factory was built in a few months and today (with new cladding) still forms the heart of the company’s main building in Orpund. Changing times and new visions In the early 1960s, Zumbach realised that its business with drives could not guarantee a viable future for the From the basics

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May 2017