Waldrich Coburg
Assembly Line
Heavy Engineering: The Complex Logistics of Moving Large Machine Tools
One of our fascinations with large-format machine tools has little to do with their capabilities, but everything to do with the logistics involved with getting them up and running. Here’s how one of the world’s oldest builders of giant machine tools, Waldrich Coburg, tackles the challenge.
“Most of our most challenging transport situations don’t involve relocating a machine from an existing facility to a new one,” he says, “but are instead customers that bought a used piece of equipment.” It is not uncommon that these used machines — machines that are intended to last a lifetime — need to be retrofitted with new controllers or spindle units, then moved to a storage facility while the customer works on the foundation.