Incoming orders and turnover at the Kübler Group from Villingen-Schwenningen have developed better than expected this year. This was reported by the two shareholders and managing directors Lothar and Gebhard Kübler at the company's annual press conference. They attributed the business successes to the „innovation marathon“ initiated a few years ago. They presented slip rings, which are used in packaging and filling technology among other things, as one of the successes of this internal company initiative.
The Group's sales target, which had been set at 66 million euros, will be achieved, the company bosses announced. 70 per cent of sales would be generated abroad. Turnover in the Chinese, Indian and US markets is growing particularly strongly - at well over 20 per cent, in some cases even 30 per cent. Sales growth of 14 per cent was achieved in the EU region and ten per cent in Germany.
The Kübler Group employs 480 people worldwide. There are 380 employees in Germany.
Link between stationary and rotating system components
The aim of the innovation marathon was to occupy new market segments with product innovations. In order to achieve this goal, the proportion of
research and development employees from twelve to 16 per cent.
One of several examples presented at the press conference were slip rings that have been optimised to meet the requirements of packaging and filling systems, among other things. Slip rings are regarded as the link between stationary and rotating system components. The demands on these components are constantly increasing because more and more data needs to be transferred between systems and machines in Industry 4.0.
Kübler has paid particular attention to the shielding technology within the slip rings and can now guarantee that multiple fieldbus and Ethernet channels can be transmitted reliably and without interference. Data rates of 100 megabits per second up to 1 gigabit per second are possible. As an option, the slip rings can be equipped with internal sensors for condition monitoring purposes in order to record various measured values.
Slip rings to transmit even more information
In future, the slip rings will not only act as passive components, but will also use electronics to record and analyse the device status and transmit it to the system control, announces Kübler. This would make these components part of predictive maintenance processes.
Kübler slip rings such as the SR060E model have long been used in flow-pack machines, filling systems and stretch packaging machines. The Kübler slip rings SR120, SR160 or SR250H are used for stretch blow moulding, filling, sealing and labelling. The components are also well suited for use in food processing machines because they are designed in protection class IP67.
