Company visit: PIM International, Vol.4 No. 1 March 2010, pages 29-34, 3008 words

Author: Bernard Williams, Consultant, Shrewsbury, UK

Fischingen, the most southerly community in eastern Switzerland’s Canton Thurgau, nestles in rolling green and wooded hills. The small community is renowned for its former Cisterian monastery and the region, which borders Canton Zürich, is a hikers’ paradise only 40 minutes from Zurich Airport. Less well known is that Fischingen is the home to Parmaco Metal Injection Molding AG, one of Europe’s leading and most innovative MIM producers since 1992. Bernard Williams reports on his recent visit for PIM International.

Georg Breitenmoser, Parmaco’s Managing Director, is a native of this part of Canton Thurgau and studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich, where he graduated with a degree in Materials Engineering in 1981. He had chosen metallurgy in his final year because he felt it gave him more options for travel and career opportunities in a country which he stated is dominated by chemical and pharmaceutical giants. His first job after graduating was with Oerlikon, near Zürich, a company specialising in producing welding machines and welding consumables such as pressed stick electrodes coated with flux and alloy steel powders.

Initially he worked in the R&D department but was later made responsible for providing technical support to Oerlikon’s many licensees around the world, thus helping him to fulfil his wish to travel. In 1984 he was given the opportunity to work for a licensee in Lima, Peru, where he developed alloy steel (13Cr steel) welding electrodes used to refurbish turbine parts used in hydroelectric power plants.

A new chapter in Georg Breitenmoser’s life started in 1987 when he decided to embark on a MBA at California State University in San Luis Obispo and it was during his stay in California that he made a visit in 1988 to Carl Zueger, a fellow Swiss and co-founder of one of the world’s first metal injection moulding companies, Parmatech Corp. based in Petaluma near San Francisco. The visit made sufficient impression on Breitenmoser to convince him of the future potential for MIM technology and he was offered a manufacturing license to use Parmatech’s patented technology in Switzerland.........

Figures and Tables:

Fig. 1 Georg Breitenmoser, managing director of Parmaco AG in Fischingen, Switzerland

Fig. 2 Good tool maintenance is critical to the success of metal injection moulding

Fig. 3 Injection moulding of MIM parts at Parmaco.The six axis robot gripper is picking two parts

Fig. 4 A dimension on a housing part cover is being measured in Parmaco’s quality control department

Fig. 5 MIM parts being loaded into the combination debinding and sintering furnace at Parmaco

Fig. 6 A line of batch sintering furnaces

Fig. 7 Selection of small and micro-MIM parts in production at Parmaco

Fig. 8 Award winning Micro-MIM high torque planet-carrier produced by Parmaco

Fig. 9 MIM part having extremely intricate shape and thin walls for a mounting unit used to position a glass prism in an optical lens system

Fig. 10 MIM part used in a nut tightener system for special self drilling flat head screws for facade construction

Fig. 11 MIM receptor part for jig saw power tool in various stages of production.

Fig. 12 Functional areas of the MIM slide used in jig saw blade holder assembly.

Fig. 13 A selection of parts for various industries such as locking systems, textile, medical, stepping motor gears and fire arms

Fig. 14 This print wheel is the heart of a 24 dot matrix printer head manufactured of 3% silicon iron soft magnetic alloy

Fig. 15 MIM housing cover made from 316L stainless steel for a sensor casing. (As presented in the EuroPM2009 keynote paper “Key Areas for Development in PM Technology”, Dr Olle Grinder, PM Technology AB, Sweden)