KLD - Work at Oerlikon Bührle Machine Tool Works

If you are looking for spare parts for Oerlikon Bührle lathes, please read this note.

If you are looking for the famous Spiromatic gear cutting machines, please read this note.

In march 1963 I started my first job in Switzerland at the Oerlikon Bührle Machine Tool Works (WO). Until 1974 I changed department three times and moved from engineering to data processing:

• Engineering of a wave form loom (a loom that does not shoot the shuttle through the weave, but uses a continuous slower movement of a number of shuttles carrying just the thread of one fabric width)
• Engineering an electronically controlled Jacquard mechanism (mechanical parts)
• Compute trajectories of artillery rockets and analyse shooting experiments. A nice thing was to develop a digital model of a landscape for easy generation of cross sections to be combined with the trajectories (on a «mainframe» with 64 KB storage...)
• Develop a PC (Olivetti) program to control and administrate mixing of animal food produced by a mill.
• Co-ordination, support and consultancy for technical programmers.

Oerlikon Bührle Machine Tools (WO)

The main products of this company were machine tools and artillery guns. The machine tools were lathes and mills as well as grinding machines to produce spiral gears. But by the time there grew departments dealing with so diverse areas as

• Developing controls and scales for fertiliser and food mills
• Developing foil blower machines for plastic foils
• Developing textile machines, such as spinning spindles and a wave loom

A major military project (ADATS - Air Defense and Anti Tank System) was started towards the end of the cold war. As in many cases this projects was not stopped in due time, although the «time has changed». During 1991 financial losses in the military area accumulated to 2.3 milliards CHF. This caused a significant change in the top management, resulting in closing and reduction of companies of the Bührle Group.

The company WO was broken down into smaller entities (for example, Oerlikon Geartec). The military activities were incorporated into the Contraves (CONTra AVES) forming the Oerlikon Contraves AG.

Note 1 (Request for spare parts for the Oerlikon lathes)

Since earlyer than 1990 the service and spare parts for the Oerlikon lathes is handled by
Walter Gächter; Werkzeugmaschinen-Reparaturen; Bücklerstrasse 4b; CH-8181 Höri
Phone: +41-44-862 53 90
e-mail: T. Gächter

You may also have a look at MullerMachines to find second hand machines.

Note 2 (Request on Spriomatic gear cutters)

Since 1988 the famous Spriomatic machines are manufactured by Oerlikon Geartec (OGT), which has developed from a former business sector of Oerlikon Bührle AG, an internationally renowned machine tool company. It has owned the Maag gear machine company since 1988. In June 1991 OGT became an independent enterprise. Since 1993 it has been part of the Klingelnberg-Oerlikon Group.

At www.klingelnberg.com select Contact from the main navigation bar and fill in the contact form with your request.