A tube laser cutting system is transforming processes
A tube laser makes time-consuming sawing, drilling and milling redundant. At the Swiss family firm Stoffel Metallbautechnik, the ByTube Star 130 combines a wide range of processes.
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There is one sentence that Elia Stoffel does not want to hear in his company: “We've always done it this way.” The 26-year-old is the third generation of his family to run the company and believes it is important for his employees to question existing processes and look for new solutions. Time and again, the team puts their heads together and asks themselves: how can we do it faster and better?
Equipping for a special job
At the end of 2023, Stoffel Metallbautechnik received an order for which “business as usual” was definitely not an option. Within a few weeks, supporting structures and railings had to be produced for a 350-meter-long adventure trail. The opening of the Schlaufensteg near Baar – an elaborate wooden structure with steel elements – was already scheduled for summer 2024.
“With our existing machinery, that would have been impossible,” says Elia Stoffel. Although the company already had experience in tube processing, a lot of the work was still done by hand: tubes were sawn, drilled, milled and then welded. The high volume of this order could only be handled with the efficiency of a tube laser, that much was clear. However, the first task was to find an employee with tube processing experience. “Without experienced operators, even the best machine is useless,” notes Stoffel. After a laborious search, he found what he was looking for – all that was missing was the tube laser.
“With the ByTube Star 130, we produce railings significantly faster.”
The grandfather no longer understands the world
Based on the good experiences with the flatbed lasers from Bystronic and the in-depth advice, the choice fell on the ByTube Star 130. In February 2024, all three generations of the family met to try out the new acquisition. “My grandfather no longer understood the world,” says Elia Stoffel. What used to take the precision engineer several hours to complete in his metal workshop was now done by the tube laser in a few seconds.
Over the past 30 years, the family-owned company has continuously integrated new machines into its manufacturing process. Elia's father Rolf Stoffel made a name for himself with his wide range of processing capabilities, and his son has inherited a penchant for technology. “With the tube laser, we are once again pioneers in our region,” says the young managing director. As a test customer, Stoffel supports Bystronic in the further development of the tube systems.
3 Generations of Managing Directors: René, Elia & Rolf Stoffel
Child's play instead of backbreaking work
The investment pays off: ‘We now produce railings much faster,’ says Elia Stoffel. Time is saved above all with the plug-in connections, which the ByTube Star 130 prepares in no time. The automatic weld seam detection ensures that the holes for the connections are always made in the right place. Elia Stoffel would not want to do without the “laser scan” option either, which automatically compensates for tolerance deviations in the material and thus increases precision.
The high cutting quality and the wide range of processing options reduce the number of downstream steps to a minimum. Drilling and milling are now redundant and significantly less welding is required. Manual measuring and marking of the tubes is no longer necessary thanks to laser marking. The follow-up processes are therefore a breeze, as Stoffel notes: “Assembling the parts is almost as easy as building with Lego.”
“Thanks to the plug-in connections and the laser markings, assembling the parts is almost as easy as building with Lego.”
