80 Years of Blaser Swisslube
“Serving comes before earning” – This is the motto under which the lubricant manufacturer Blaser Swisslube is celebrating its 80th company anniversary. It all started back in 1936 with “Blaha-Glanz” – a shoe polish. A lot has happened since that time, and the family-run company in Hasle-Rüegsau (Switzerland) has developed from a small regional company into the global player that it is today. In the company’s own Technology Center, the focus is squarely on research and development. This focus has resulted in a breakthrough being achieved in a current civil aviation project.
The first successful product produced by the former Blaser+Co. AG was Blaha-Glanz, a water-repellent shoe polish that was sold on the surrounding farms. Willy Blaser laid the foundation for today’s company group in the crisis year, 1936. As a 20-year-old who had been unable to find work in the painting trade he had trained in, he founded a one-man company in his parent’s house where he produced lubricants and chemical-technical products especially for agriculture. Perseverance was the order of the day due to the shortage of raw materials during the war years.
The real upturn in the company’s fortunes began after the war when the customer base expanded to include, besides farmers, mechanical workshops, the construction industry, the wood and metal processing industries and the first industrial factories. “With the same pioneering spirit that was present when the company was founded, tireless work was done to continue to expand the company, to increase and modernize the manufacturing facilities, as well as to increase the level of research and development,” explains the grandson and current Managing Director, Marc Blaser.
Step-by-step to becoming a global player
In 1974, Peter Blaser (Chairman of the Board of Directors since 2010) took up the torch and became the second generation to manage the company. As a mechanical engineer, he took steps to introduce metal processing in the company’s repertoire as well as to establish and expand the sales network in Europe and abroad. Due to the international orientation of the company, the company name was also changed to Blaser Swisslube. In 1981, Blaser Swisslube Inc. was founded in White Plains, New York with the first US production plant opened in Goshen, New York in 1986. In 1995 and 1996, subsidiaries in Germany, the Czech Republic and Japan followed. Today, Blaser has its own subsidiaries and agents close to its customers in around 60 countries across the globe and employs a total of 600 employees, with 300 of those being in Switzerland.
From metalworking fluid to Liquid Tool
The company continued unabated to develop its expertise in all things to do with metalworking fluids. This involved the research and development laboratory being further expanded and perfected; it is meanwhile the largest of its kind in the industry. On a surface area of around 3,500 m2, 70 chemists, microbiologists and laboratory technicians work on creating coolants of the best quality, as well as on analyzing metalworking fluid samples from customers around the world. In order to be able to offer customers an effective added value when it comes to machining, the company inaugurated its very own Technology Center in 2009. Marc Blaser: “Since then in the state-of-the-art processing centers we have been able to offer customers practical depictions of their machining operations, as well as to carry out stringent tests on newly developed coolants. For us, this is the technological advantage that we wish to continue to expand.”
“The factors productivity, economic efficiency and machining quality depend a great deal on the choice and quality of the metalworking fluid and on the expertise of machining specialists. Thanks to the in-house concentration of expertise, we are in a position to offer our partners a coolant solution that is tailored exactly to their needs – a Liquid Tool,” notes Marc Blaser, third-generation CEO.
Doubling of the tool life
In a recent project, Blaser experts in the Technology Center impressively optimized the tool life. A renowned partner filled the role of international supplier and manufactured aircraft parts from a high-strength titanium alloy. In the ultra-modern Technology Center in Hasle-Rüegsau, a range of tests were started with the goal of optimizing the tool life during pocket machining.
The specialists at Blaser reconstructed the partner’s situation on the DMU 65 monoblock and began comprehensive tests using a trochoidal milling strategy. This involved a conventional metalworking fluid from an earlier generation being compared with a coolant solution that has been adapted exactly to the partner’s needs. The series of width of wear tests were conducted up to 0.30 mm.
The results were excellent. With the optimally adapted fluid tool from Blaser Swisslube, 11 instead of just five pockets could be milled until the wear on the tool forced the processing to be stopped. The result achieved was confirmed in a series of various tests, and corresponds to a doubling of the tool life.
Machining data:
Operation: Pocket milling
Material: high-strength titanium alloy for aircraft construction
Machine type: DMU 65 monoblock (DMG MORI)
Tool: Sandvik 2P342-1200-CMA 1740 – End mill with a diameter of 12 mm
Cut parameters: Vc 80 m/min, fz 0.075 mm, ae 0.9 mm, ap 19 mm
Coolant pressure: 75 bar
“The partner and we at Blaser Swisslube are very satisfied with the results achieved. Improvements with respect to cycle time have not been examined as of yet. Here too, we are certainly ready to continue to optimize together with our partner,” concludes Marc Blaser.
For more, visit www.blaser.com.
