Project Challenge
Small Swedish manufacturer Comeco offers bending machines for different rebar diameters to suit all demands. Working with NORD DRIVESYSTEMS, they have retrofitted one line for rebar diameters up to 20 mm with electric drives and are currently following it up with another line for up to 40 mm.
When Comeco first designed rebar bending machines, they used hydraulics. This is a very common choice for rebar benders, but the specialists for construction-site machinery found several problems with this technology. Fredric Hallberg, owner and manager of Comeco, says: “We have two hydraulic bender models which we developed from scratch. The electric system is very complex, so if it fails to perform, the engineer who built it is practically the only person who can repair it. The installation of the hydraulic power unit, piping network, and sensors takes a lot of time and the machine design is much more complex and more prone to problems than our new electromechanical machines.” Comeco therefore researched ways to make the machines more robust and ideally cheaper to build, but without compromising on quality. “Analyzing competitors’ designs,” Hallberg recalls, “we found that we could build the machines cheaper with an electric drive. The electric rebar benders that were available in the market were much leaner designs, but also more basic in functional terms than the hydraulic ones. It was also important to us, that we would integrate top-of-the-line functionality and provide more user value and comfort than the available low-end machines.”