100 years of LACH DIAMANT
As author of the magazines “dihw” and “hp tooling,” Horst Lach has created two series, “Poly-poly” and “100 Years of Lach Diamant.” In them, he describes the paths to a new era of material processing with PCD, CBN, etc., right up to the latest applications.
Horst Lach, born in 1940, runs LACH DIAMANT, a company founded in 1922 by Jakob Lach, together with his son Robert Lach, who holds a degree in engineering.
1984 until reunification – a German-German story, entertainingly told by someone who made his way from Saxony to Hanau.
In my article “Poly-Poly – or what?” published six years ago in 2019, I described the state of the automotive industry in the GDR, which suffered from a shortage of polycrystalline diamond cutting tools for engine production. (See also Part 9, “Poly-Poly or what?” at www.lach-diamant.de )
As early as 1984, VW and the GDR drew up a plan to build a complete production facility for 250,000 four-cylinder Polo engines per year by 1988, in order to finally replace the fuel-guzzling 2-stroke engines used in Trabant and Wartburg cars.
The problem: the Polo engine was an aluminum engine that required polycrystalline diamond (PCD) for economical machining. Due to a lack of foreign currency, tool manufacturers in the GDR had to make do with carbide or diamond composite round blanks pressed in the former USSR when machining non-ferrous metals such as aluminum and copper; this was insufficient for the series production of the aluminum Polo engine.
Since LACH DIAMANT had no business relationship with the GDR prior to 1988, we were very surprised when, on September 15, 1988, the telex machine spit out an urgent order from the GDR’s Export-Import Company for approximately four thousand PKD indexable inserts.
Urgent delivery date by the end of November 1988 at the latest – just in time to announce the launch of the new engine plant at the Leipzig Autumn Fair.
We owed this major order to a recommendation from VW, whose production lines for the Polo engine in Salzgitter and Braunschweig we had been supplying exclusively since the late 1970s.
A year later, the Berlin Wall fell. It was a time of change. What would happen to the former East German economy after reunification? Together with product manager Gerd Gottschalk, I tried to find an answer to this question.
The three millionth Trabant as a 4-cylinder (photographed in 1990 in what is now the August Horch Museum in Zwickau)
A time of change and first beginnings
During this period of transition, we visited the industrial centers several times. Starting with Suhl, Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz), Zwickau, Dresden, Leipzig, Magdeburg, and ending in Quedlinburg. Without going into detail, our impressions were mixed. But we had one goal—to give this long-suffering country a better, more vibrant future, which also requires a competitive industry—and diamonds.
Ultimately, LACH DIAMANT got the ball rolling with the delivery of four thousand PKD cutting tools. However, we discovered that there were only two sharpening machines in the entire former GDR industry that could be trusted to grind polycrystalline diamonds. One was located at Heckert in Karl-Marx-Stadt as a test machine, the other at Zeiss in Jena.
The five existing furniture combines were completely inadequate for servicing PKD indexable inserts for the metal industry alone, let alone for the anticipated future demand for diamond tools.
Consequently, in order to consolidate its role as a diamond tool supplier in the new federal states, LACH DIAMANT will undertake to reinforce this position by establishing a central diamond grinding center.
No sooner said than done. The first step was to find the right person — and we struck gold in the form of Bernd Straube.
And now let’s hear him tell how everything began from his perspective and what happened next. To do so, I’m going to take a big leap forward to the year 2022, when LACH DIAMANT celebrated its 100th anniversary with many speeches at the German Goldsmiths’ House in Hanau. One of these speeches was given by Bernd Straube, which we would like to share with you, dear readers:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am now at the end of the line of speakers.
For me, 32 years are coming to an end today. After all, I have helped shape and influence 32 percent of the development process. I am also quite proud that we have actually mastered it so well. The beginnings were difficult. The 32 years were not all fun and games, as one might think from the name. But they were definitely quite a few years.
They were interesting, instructive, and good years, but they were also difficult years. I would still like to take this opportunity to ask for your attention as I give a brief review of those 32 years. Much has been forgotten. For the sake of simplicity, I will do this in my native language, as I come from the beautiful Free State of Saxony, as is unmistakable. We may no longer have a king there, but we have preserved our own language. I know that not everyone loves it, but I always say that I find Bavarian and Swabian even worse.
I would ask you to be strong for the next few minutes. You have to get through this now. In Saxony, malicious tongues claim that we are a bit stubborn.
But I would perhaps put that into perspective. I would say that we express our opinion, sometimes a little louder than perhaps necessary, but ultimately there are many roads that lead to Rome.
Briefly about myself: From 1971 to 1975, I studied machine tool engineering/production engineering at Dresden University of Technology. I graduated in 1975 with a degree in machining technology.
From 1975 to 1990, I worked in civil engineering at an electrical appliance factory. It was a research and development facility for various companies in the GDR that manufactured household appliances, such as vacuum cleaners, hand mixers, blenders, and food processors. We had all the electric motors and were involved in the development of electric motors.
Most of these household appliances were exported to West Germany under the trade name “Privileg für die Welle.” This gave us the advantage that the companies also received a small share of the proceeds, which we were able to invest in modern production lines. At the electrical appliance factory in Suhl, we had another processing plant from the Swiss company Micafil, where commutator processing was carried out with diamond tools. Our task was then to replace the diamond tools, which were only delivered once, with tools from our own production, or to regrind the tools that were available for our own use. We had help from the Research Center for Machine Tools in Chemnitz, which was in a similar situation. They were the development center for the machine tool industry, which was also strongly represented in Chemnitz. They were also quite well equipped in terms of machine technology, but it was a very laborious process to regrind the tools.
It took us one to two weeks to make a turning tool. There were two or three machines in the GDR, one was at the research center in Chemnitz, one at the combine in Jena, which also had a large export share. We then had to replace these tools and had so-called super-hard cutting materials from the former Soviet Union. But machining became increasingly difficult. We managed it in a sense, but it was hard work.
Then came November 11, 1989. The Wall fell, the borders opened, and there was great euphoria. On July 1, 1990, monetary union came overnight and business was like in the West. But after a short time, it became apparent that things were coming over that we had never heard of before: employment offices, unemployment, and short-time work. This also affected my business. It started with short-time work, and orders dried up. Companies were no longer competitive and could no longer sell anything with the Deutschmark. It all happened very quickly, and a certain fear for our livelihoods began to spread.
I read an advertisement in the daily newspaper Freie Presse: “Lach Diamant Werkzeughersteller is looking for sales representatives for the new federal states.” I knew how to spell the word “diamond” and had already handled a few tools before. I sent an application to Hanau. Shortly afterwards, I received a telegram: “Please call us, we would like to welcome you personally to an interview in Hanau.” That was very easy to say. In 1990, ordinary citizens of the GDR did not yet have telephones. That is actually incomprehensible now, but telephones were reserved for the police, the party, the Stasi, and the fire department. I couldn’t call from work either. First of all, I couldn’t say that I wanted a new job, and secondly, it could only be done through the personnel department. At 9 a.m., I said goodbye briefly at work and said I was going out for a moment. Then I marched to the main post office and made a call to Hanau.
At 2:30 p.m., the call came in. I picked up the receiver and said, “Hello?” A sharp voice replied, “Yes, Stein-Junkuhn Lach Diamant, how can I help you?” “I have a telegram from you and am supposed to come here for a job interview.” “Hold on a moment.”
A short time later, Ms. Stein-Junkuhn returned and said, “Mr. Lach is not in his office at the moment. Please call back in half an hour.” I was on the verge of a heart attack and shouted into the phone, “For God’s sake, you can’t hang up! I’ve been waiting six hours for this call.” The other end didn’t say anything; there was dead silence on the phone. I don’t want to know what Ms. Stein-Junkuhn was thinking at that moment, what this guy is babbling about. I kept talking: “Please don’t hang up, you can’t do that.”
Then she took pity on me and said, “Please hold on.” After a while, Mr. Lach came to the phone. “Lach, how can I help you?” “I was supposed to come in for a job interview.” “Yes, please come in on Monday at 10 a.m.” After saying hello three times, I marched back into my office.
There was a lot of excitement because I had been gone for over six hours. They thought something had happened. It was a Friday. On Monday at three in the morning, I drove to Hanau with a pot of coffee and a sandwich. I stuck my navigation system on the steering wheel, with a note saying A4 to Eisenach, A7 to Fürth, and A66 to Mannheim. Luckily, I got a new Meßner Atlas, as there were no maps of the west available in the GDR. I got through without any problems and arrived at Lach Diamant on Donaustrasse at 8 a.m. Everything settled down. I leisurely drank my coffee, ate my sandwich, and calmly marched inside.
I entered the demonstration room. First, a gentleman checked to see if I knew anything about the tools. I was able to tell him quite a bit about the commutator turning tools. That took care of that.
Then, after quite some time, Mr. Horst Lach came in and said, “Yes, you can start. I have another position available; you can work in sales. But I would like to open a sharpening facility in Chemnitz, and I’m still looking for a sharpening facility manager. However, that would mean you would have to spend six to nine months purely on training.” I didn’t think twice. I said that I would take the position as sharpening center manager. I simply had more practical experience, and that sounded a bit more solid.
Mr. Horst Lach then disappeared again, came back in after a short time and said, “Here is your employment contract, sign it. You can start on January 1.” It was December 18. I stood there, wanting to start. But I couldn’t make it by January 1 because of my notice period. I didn’t know when I would be free. So he said, “You don’t have a job, but sign here and we’ll leave the start date open. Let us know when you can start.”
Then I drove east again in my Wartburg. It was bright sunshine, a beautiful day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and then there was a flash of lightning. I wondered where the thunderstorm had come from in such bright sunshine. Three weeks later, it all came to a head. I received a letter from the Kassel Regional Council with a fine and a small photo of me: “You were driving at 138 km/h in a 120 km/h zone.” That cost me 80 Deutschmarks and one point on my driving record in Flensburg. Of course, that hurt a lot, but those were the consequences I had to live with.
Ultimately, as Mr. Lach just said, I received very professional training, which helped a lot. We then moved to the sharpening facility in the fall of 1991, but then we were standing there with no work to do. The project where we were supposed to be employed, those tools in Chemnitz, had disappeared. We were lucky that the VW engine plant in Salzgitter, where the Lach company had delivered many tools, was looking for a regrinding service. They had done this themselves before, but then one person was sick and another retired. They had a large number of tools there, and the Lach company made another spontaneous decision by Mr. Lach:
“Yes, that’s what the East Germans do.”
I have to say, that was a huge challenge. I drove to Salzgitter in my Wartburg one night and had tools worth over 100,000 Deutschmarks in the trunk on the way back. That was my most valuable car to date. Then we were really thrown in at the deep end with tools we had never seen before that we were supposed to regrind. We got the hang of it eventually. Every Friday, a courier would come, and the tools had to be ready, and new ones would arrive to be reground. That took a lot of stamina on our part, almost every weekend for the first few weeks and months. But we persevered. We didn’t receive a single complaint from Salzgitter. On the contrary, they said that the service life was significantly better than the ones they had reground themselves.
That’s how a success story began. We hired new people one after the other, and new technology arrived. It was relatively easy to find well-trained people. They were acquaintances from the research center, such as Mr. Hänel and Mr. Weiß. That wasn’t really the problem. The problem was that our focus was becoming too narrow. We didn’t know how to proceed. Then Mr. Lach came to me and said, “Please look for a plot of land in an industrial park; we want to build. It should be about 10,000 square meters.” So I got to work. There was an industrial park near us that was relatively well filled. It was also close to the railroad, which was another requirement.
So I contacted the mayor there and explained what I wanted. He said that, given the size, almost everything was sold out. Fortunately for us, he was interested. He asked what we did. Before becoming mayor, he had been production manager at a machine tool company for 30 years, and his heart was still in technology. He also made it his mission to ensure that only manufacturing companies were allowed to move into the industrial park. No warehouses were allowed, so that production would take place in the west, with goods being stored temporarily and sold there.
He wanted to fill it with manufacturing businesses so that workers could find employment in the area. He said that one section, which had been pre-reserved, was still available. It was 7,500 square meters, and we had to decide within 14 days whether to buy it and draw up the purchase agreement.
He helped us with a notary for the purchase agreement, which was also a problem at the time. There weren’t enough notaries. He also guaranteed that the building application would be processed quickly. I informed Mr. Lach, who then flew to Dresden with Mr. Troyke the following week. I picked them up there with my Opel Kadett. It was a very hot day, around 30 degrees Celsius, and the 70 kilometers were full of construction sites. We sweated a lot in the car, and I took the opportunity to say to Mr. Troyke, “Air conditioning would be nice.” I have to say, it helped. My next car had air conditioning. As I said, it went smoothly.
The purchase went ahead, was approved, and in November of the same year, three months later, the excavators rolled in and the earthworks began. In July and August 1996, we moved into the new hall. By then, we had ten employees. Of course, we were a little shocked by the size—it was 800 square meters. Suddenly, we didn’t know where to put all the machines. We even wanted to install a bowling alley. But then things happened very quickly. New people and new tools kept arriving, and new technology was purchased. Then Mr. Horst Lach made another decision: he decided that the entire PKD tool production would be moved to Saxony.
At the main plant in Hanau, there was an uproar. All those responsible pressured Mr. Lach, saying, “You can’t do that. We’ll lose control and quality and everything…” Anyone who knows Mr. Lach knows that he had already made his decision. You might think that he is also a stubborn Saxon – and he said, “We’re going ahead with this, you can do it.” It was a clean business decision for us. It could have gone wrong.
What did Mr. Lach do? There is plenty of space, as the hall has been doubled in size. We carried out the conversion while production was ongoing, knocking down walls. We had a thin foil wall to separate the areas. It was winter, and people worked on the project wearing thick jackets, hats, and gloves. The conditions were difficult, but we managed it. We were then able to position the machines more optimally and have proper prefabrication. We were able to place the locking machines in a separate area, which meant we could also open a second shift so that we could work in two shifts.
In 2012, we were faced with the decision again and we were bursting at the seams. We couldn’t extend any further, but we could expand. An identical hall was added to the width, again while production was ongoing. Walls were cut out and hammered down. But I think the result is impressive. We have a beautiful production facility in Saxony, where I believe we still have a thriving team. We are also proud that we were able to help shape 32 percent of the history of the Lach company. I would like to once again express my sincere thanks to Mr. Horst Lach for his entrepreneurial courage and the trust he placed in us. I look back on the past 30 years with satisfaction and pride.”
And I would like to take this opportunity to thank you once again for this atmospheric, humorous, and insightful presentation. At the moment, Bernd Straube and his wife are likely to be traveling in their caravan as globetrotters between the Ore Mountains, the world, and their grandchildren.
More about Saxony coming soon in “100 Years of LACH DIAMANT.”
Horst Lach
