Questions with Jeremy David

1. Who is Rollomatic?
Rollomatic is a private Swiss company founded in 1989, building CNC machinery, primarily for tool & cutter grinding, but also for cylindrical grinding, and laser machining of ultra-hard materials. Our North American headquarters is in Mundelein, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. From that location we service & support customers throughout North America with a full team of applications engineers, service engineers, and spare parts.

2. What’s Rollomatic’s history with the medical industry?
Rollomatic has always served the cutting tool industry, primarily for industrial cutting tools, but the surgical cutting tool market was a natural fit for the technology and solutions we provide. One of the first applications was for rotary burs in the medical and dental industry. We also have a few customers with 30-year-old Rollomatic machines that produce surgical drills every day.

The medical industry is very diverse, but there are many common demands: high precision, reliability, compact, and a demand for attention to detail. Rollomatic addresses these with various solutions.

Our GrindSmart platform is the ideal solution for those producing bone drills, rotary burs, rasps, and saw blades. With a 6-axis kinematic and high precision construction, the GrindSmart 630XS is the workhorse of the surgical drill industry. The 630XS has a grinding capacity of 0.1mm to 20mm diameter and up to 350mm overall length.

For medical plastic injection molded parts, Rollomatic has found great success in the production of core pins for the pipette industry. The ShapeSmart NP50 is a pinch/peel grinding machine that can produce parts all the way down to 0.025mm diameter. The proven platform – Rollomatic has produced this series of machines for more than 30 years – has the highest precision and ultimate surface finishes.

But the solution is never just the machine! Rollomatic has the expertise and know-how in the medical industry to provide our customers with the processes, programs, peripherals, and training required to be successful. We are proud to serve not only the large OEMs but also the smallest of contract manufacturers.

4. What does future R&D for Rollomatic look like as it relates to the medical industry?
Medical faces many of the same challenges as other manufacturing industries – skilled labor shortage, lower lot sizes, increased precision requirements, etc.

To address these challenges Rollomatic has invested heavily in a few areas:

– A learning platform providing our customers with e-learning modules. These are true courses, with quizzes and exams to ensure knowledge is transferred. Our Learning Center has also helped to further develop the onsite training curriculum to help us provide better deliverables for customers.

Automation – Rollomatic has incorporated autoloaders into machines since the very beginning, so automation has always been a part of our DNA. During the last few years, we have also developed additional solutions with our SmartFactory team. We offer several solutions for laser marking, blank handling, inspection, and other value-added tasks.

Connectivity – Our solutions range from simple machine monitoring software to a platform providing cloud services including computing, data storage, and analytics. Our RConnect allows for the utilization of the industry standard OPC-UA connection.

For more information:

www.rollomaticusa.com