Architects, bakeries, dairy farms, churches; the customer base of Eberle Metall in Austria is as diverse as the range of its services. Turning their ideas into completed deliveries often employs the creative potential of Josef Eberle and his team. To gain more flexibility for their production, the family-owned business invested into a combined waterjet-plasma cutting machine with a waterjet bevel head for cutting a wide range of materials. “That is a huge advantage for us“, says Josef Eberle.
Anyone who uses the services of Eberle Metall in Hittisau, Austria, is looking for something special. This is because the relatively small company of eleven employees does not produce goods off–the-shelf. The versatile company led by Lukas and Josef Eberle serves a wide range of customers and industries. Just recently, Eberle Metall made all the brass ornaments for the Bildstein basilica, enameled furniture for a bakery and a 6-meter-high fountain for a main square. The creative ideas for these projects often come from the company itself – construction, production and assembly are all carried out by specialists from Eberle. “We are definitely not a serial producer or a subcontractor. We manufacture custom pieces. Our employees are so good that we can do almost anything. They are highly skilled and not afraid to experiment,“ the owner Josef Eberle explains.
Company grew through apprenticeship support Dairy farms also appreciate the state-of-the-art designs delivered by the 1949 founded family business. Eberle develops, manufactures and assembles the entire equipment for small alpine dairies within a 500 km radius. Almost all employees started as trainees and worked their way up in the company – one could say that Eberle Metall grew thanks to apprenticeship support. Following the company philosophy that “no one grows up as a specialist”, every worker tries out every job and learns to operate every machine. For the workforce this means a welcome change in the routine and it also frees the company from dependence on the know-how of an individual employee.
Eberle Metall's previous waterjet cutting machine – also a MicroStep – has been on duty for about 20 years, involved in almost all of their productions. A decision to replace it with a newer model with additional features finally came in 2018 and by June 2019, a brand-new waterjet-plasma cutting machine from the AquaCut series was put into operation, equipped with a waterjet bevel head for 3D cutting and a 2D plasma cutting head. „We wanted waterjet for sure for its flexibility, to cut the inner countours, and afterwards switch to the much faster plasma. That was our idea. And the plasma works nice and well“, says Jozef Eberle. It is a great advantage to be able to cut almost everything in-house. 98% of the cutting jobs are done for Eberle’s own production. “Many special projects that we conduct often require a new part in the process. With the technology in house, the employee just goes to the machine, cuts the necessary part and is able to continue working on the project just a few minutes later. That is of a really high value“, says the trained artist-blacksmith. The other advantage is a well-stocked warehouse. The most common materials the company processes with the AquaCut are within a 1 to 25 mm thickness range: steel, brass, stainless steel and sometimes also aluminum, in rare cases also glass and copper. “The machine runs well so far. If it lasts like this for another 20 years, we will be very satisfied. We count on that it does”, concludes Eberle.
