LACH DIAMANT - 100 Years
For the magazines “journal of hp tooling” and “dihw” Horst Lach created two series: “Poly – poly” and “LACH DIAMANT – 100 years”. In these series he describes the transition into a new era of material machining using PCD, CBN, etc. up to the latest applications.
Horst Lach, born in 1940, runs the company LACH DIAMANT – founded in 1922 by Jakob Lach – together with his son, Dpl.-Ing. Robert Lach.
“He had a grin written all over his face” – you’ve surely come across this expression in novels, used to describe a moment of delight or amusement.
Reading the speech of our retiree Mr. Straube, quoted in the last article (part 13), may well have brought such a grin to your own face. His words, pointed and enriched with what today are historic anecdotes, made vividly clear the difficulties of establishing communication between East and West Germany.
One example from his speech: the hours of waiting at a post office in Saxony just to make a phone call to Hanau-only to be told, in despair, that the person he wanted to reach was in a meeting and he should try again later.
Such anecdotes brought us many smiles indeed
Speaking of phone connections from East to West, I am reminded of the Leipzig Trade Fair, in fall 1990, where LACH DIAMANT exhibited to demonstrate-among other things-for the first time to the East German furniture and woodworking industries the sharpening of diamond tools (PCD) on a LACH EDG sharpening machine.
Apparently, to spare West German exhibitors the long waiting times Mr.
Straube had experienced at post offices, the GDR provided 100 direct phone lines to West Germany. Naturally, the LACH DIAMANT trade fair team took advantage of this opportunity.
To support communication, we purchased the first “mobile phone” available on the market at the time-a portable Philips Porty, weighing about 5.5 pounds.
In our “dacha” in the evenings, before falling asleep, we made a sport of repeatedly dialing our loved ones’ numbers in the West, hoping that, after endless ringing, someone would finally pick up. When that hap-pened, it meant we had successfully “captured” one of the 100 lines. That was our first short excursion into the lively founding history of the LACH DIAMANT plant in Lichtenau near Chemnitz.
Spark erosion made it possible
Some of the pioneering events that earned
LACH DIAMANT its role as a trailblazer in German industry are already familiar to you, dear reader, from earlier ar-ticles. One was the discovery in 1978 of spark erosion for cutting and profiling polycrystalline diamonds (PCD). Without this breakthrough, the development of PCD cutting tools – essential to the success of the wood/furniture industry, the automotive and aerospace industries, and later wind power manufacturing-would not have been possible in the 1980’s and 1990’s, nor today.
Without spark erosion and the resulting “EDG” grinding (Electrical Discharge Grinding), LACH would never have be-come, virtually overnight, a leading diamond tool manufacturer for the superior machining of wood and plastics. The founding of LACH-SPEZIAL-WERKZEUGE GmbH in 1979 would not have happened without this new technology.
The first portable phone- Philips Porty – helped us bridge the communication gap between East and West
But where did this sudden superiority and know-how come from, leading to the new company?
It had been just ten years since some toolmakers had com- “Now Lach has lost his mind -he wants to machine wood with mitted to carbide for machining wood-based materials. Now,
diamond.”
suddenly, a polycrystalline diamond cutting material appeared that promised tool life 250 to 300 times greater than carbide.
I still recall the LIGNA Trade Fair of 1979, the very first appearance of LACH-SPEZIAL-WERKZEUGE GmbH, when so-called “industry insiders” whispered behind their hands: “Now Lach has lost his mind -he wants to machine wood with diamond.”
Many helpers-and a colleague named chance
Yet the idea of Lach, the trained industrial businessman, was not so crazy after all. First, it was based on the now-possible processing and dividing of synthetic polycrystalline diamonds by spark erosion (later known as »EDG-plus« sharpening machines). Second, it relied on many helpers: Dieter Claus, Gerhard Mai, Joachim and Andreas Weber, Kurt Hemerka, Günter Hobohm, among others-a team combining experienced LACH DIAMANT staff and new employees at LACH-SPEZIAL-WERKZEUGE GmbH.
True “pioneering work” awaited every single member.
Today I know: such things don’t simply happen on their own.
They must be developed. And sometimes chance lends a helping hand, leading to something new, as this example shows:
When LACH-SPEZIAL-WERKZEUGE GmbH turned its attention to diamond tools for the wood and composite in-dustries, carbide toolmakers already knew that their carbide milling cutters had very short lifespans. On an end profiler, for instance, a carbide milling cutter might last only a single shift. To speed up tool changes, base bodies were designed to hold replaceable carbide inserts.
We thought: why not do the same-but with diamond?
Thus our »dreboquick« system was born: base bodies equipped with replaceable PCD cutting inserts instead of car-bide. But this path to superiority soon proved flawed.
Users of the first base bodies equipped with »dreboquick”« diamond inserts complained of unexplained scoring marks on some »dreboquick®« inserts. Were our inserts imprecise?
No – the mystery was solved when we discovered the real cul-prit: not our »dreboquick”« PCD inserts, but the base bodies themselves. Originally designed for carbide inserts, they were manufactured with tolerances far too wide for diamond.
Carbide inserts, prone to scoring as well, could “wear in” after a few meters of use and then run smoothly, Diamond, however, allowed no such forgiveness.
This realization led to a new approach:
if base bodies designed for carbide inserts were unsuitable, we would have to take another path. And thus the monoblock diamond milling cutter was born.
In this design, each PCD cutting edge is soldered tooth by tooth directly into the base body, creating a unified monoblock milling. cutter, Originally conceived for machining composite materials in the woodworking and furniture industries, the LACH DIAMANT
•monoblocks would, starting in the mid-1990s, reach new heights in automotive applications as well.
Booming demand
After the first presentation of the diamond tool program at LIGNA 1979-modeled on the then-current carbide program – demand for the superior monoblock diamond milling cutters exploded. Word spread quickly that with the new »diamond monoblock milling cutter the tedious task of changing carbide inserts after every shift was a thing of the past. The triumph of diamond tools in the wood, furniture and composite industries had begun.
And it was not just the tools. At the same time, machine builders and CNC developers were preparing to leap from NC technology to multi-axis CNC machines for mass production. The wood and plastics industries thus became forerunners to the automotive sector.
By the late 1980’s and early 1990’s things had balanced out again. Many CNC machines originally developed for the wood industry could now be used to machine aluminum, for example.
Once more it was diamond milling cutters- developed out of necessity, with soldered rather than clamped cutting edges, and with a deep understanding of the material – that led the way.
Years later, under the engineering leadership of Mr. Bugen Maurer, the
»dia-compact. milling cutter entered service on a production line at Audi’s engine plant in Hungary:
a 63mm »Dia-Monoblock milling cutter. equipped with 16 cutting edges (Z=16), each 12mm long. The development of the »Dia-Monoblock», rightly dubbed »dia-compact», continued apace.
Proven and established
Out of curiosity, I recently typed “Monoblock milling cutter” into Google-and was amazed to see how many LACH designs have found their way onto the world wide web: from the »Dia-Monoblock» for HSC/HPC aluminum machining, to »Cool-Injection and »Cool-Injection-Pluse models, with coolant delivered directly through PCD cutting edges, to chip deflectors. All
»Dia-Monoblock milling cutters» are fully assembled, balanced, and supplied with the adapter of choice- ready to use without adjustment.
In the next article you will read more about what else unfolded at LACH DIAMANT during the 1980’s.
Horst Lach
Further information: www.lach-diamond.com