Tobias Rolf, Managing Director of Rolf Lasertechnik, is always open to new solutions that move his company forward. At the same time, he is quite critical. Not everything that promises advantages fits into his concept. But when he sees a prototype of the Sorting Guide in use for the first time during a visit to Ditzingen, he is immediately enthusiastic: "We have been thinking about the time-consuming sorting of laser-cut parts for a long time. This is a real bottleneck in production. When Trumpf offered us the opportunity to test the system, we took it up immediately."

The family-run company Rolf Lasertechnik, based in Lotte, North Rhine-Westphalia, has developed into a successful contract service provider since it was founded in 2005. Tobias Rolf and his mother Susanne have shared the management of the company since 2008. On a 3,500 square meter production area with state-of-the-art machines, 40 employees work in three shifts to produce over 1,100 customer orders per month.

Around 600 customers can currently place their orders via an online portal, but also directly with the sales team. They come from a wide range of industries - from agricultural machinery construction to mechanical engineering and steel construction. But Rolf Lasertechnik also serves private customers who need a part for their garden fence. They appreciate the solution-oriented, partnership-based cooperation, the high quality standards and the fast delivery times that characterize the company.

Tobias Rolf explains that the variety of customers is matched by the variety of parts: "We have 516 different types of sheet metal in stock and produce an average of 2,500 different laser cuts per week. Our customer orders include everything from single pieces to those with up to 200 different items."

Quickly cut, elaborately absorbed

In order to use the raw material efficiently and save costs, Tobias Rolf relies on the expertise of five experienced programmers. He explains: "That's a lot of staff in relation to the five laser machines we work with, but it's worth it for us."

The programmers nest up to 20 different customer orders with up to 60 different components on the metal sheets. Although they make sure that the nesting is as structured as possible, the machine operators often work up quite a sweat when sorting the finished cut parts. To simplify parts removal, the programmers used to print out the views from the nesting program and mark the parts belonging to an order with colored highlighters. "The time required for this preparation was immense, and we still had to reckon with a certain error rate," says Rolf, adding with a smile: "After all, there are people at the machine."

Assistance system makes work easier

The Sorting Guide from Trumpf now makes life a lot easier for these people. In test operation, the camera-based assistance system was initially installed on a TruLaser 5040 fiber machine. The Sorting Guide consists of a high-resolution camera, a large screen and image recognition software. On the screen, the operator sees an image of the sheet metal panel on which all parts belonging to each other are marked in one color.

As soon as the operator has removed the first part, the camera recognizes which part it is and the Sorting Guide only displays the parts that match the removed part in colour. This provides the operator with a sorting recommendation.

In addition, the information on which parts are removed is sent to the TruTops Fab production control system, where they are flagged for posting until the end of the sorting process. Rolf summarizes: "The Sorting Guide is easy to use, relieves our employees and minimizes the error rate enormously. If I assume a sheet metal panel on which several customer orders are placed, the working time saved from programming to removal preparation to sorting is around one hour per day." In a company that relies on fast throughput times, that's quite a figure.

New machine with sorting guide

When orders at Rolf Lasertechnik suddenly picked up again at the beginning of 2021, Tobias Rolf did not hesitate and invested in a new TruLaser 5030 fiber with a 6 kW laser - again with Sorting Guide, of course. "Our production is already largely paperless," explains Rolf with satisfaction. "This now finally also applies to sorting. The Sorting Guide is simply a perfect solution for us in every respect."