Page 38 - Australasian paint & Panel Sep-Oct 2021

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OEM FOCUS
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42 GM • 44 HELLA • 45 FORD & HYUNDAI • 46 TOYOTA & VW
PAINT&PANEL SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021 WWW.PAINTANDPANEL.COM.AU
ENGINEERING TO OEM SPEC
WIELÄNDER+SCHILL HAS BEEN WORKING CLOSELY WITH OEMS TO ENGINEER BODY REPAIR SOLUTIONS FOR NEARLY 50 YEARS. SAM STREET TALKED TO STEFAN KNAPPE TO FIND OUT MORE.
HE VAST MAJORITY OF THE
Wieländer+Schill’s (WS) equip- ment offerings are premium products painstakingly devel- oped to meet the increasingly precise needs of car manufacturers. Stefan Knappe from the company’s export team explained how the WS has developed to offer a com- plete range of welding and riveting solu-
tions for a vast range of OEMs.
The journey started all the way back in 1974 when Mr Wieländer
and Mr Schill founded the company.
In the beginning they worked very closely with Mercedes-Benz which had a factory in nearby Tübingen, in the south of Germany near the Swiss border. As the company developed, new OEM relations were forged with Volkswagen and BMW. Around the millennium the company added more mainstream manufacturers to its stable such as Ford and GM, the most recent brands being Tesla and Chi- nese electric car maker Nio.
The OEMs come to WS for equipment solutions. Initially it sourced and build equipment and tools for the dealership networks, and each one would have to sport the correct corporate livery and identification numbers.
In 2005 Mercedes-Benz started to use high strength steels to improve occu- pant safety and reduce weight and there- fore fuel consumption. This was a total game changer for the industry.
“1.5mm high strength steel offered the same strength as 4mm steel, but the repair process became more complex.” Knappe said.
Other welding companies
were slow to develop their own solutions for high
strength steels.”
In order to be able to repair this new steel, the InvertaSpot GT was born. This meant that WS had to engineer a welder where the transformer had to be moved to the clamp in order to avoid voltage drops which would impair a perfect weld.
Knappe remembers that other welding companies were slow to develop their own solutions for high strength steels - they didn’t realise that the future of car construction was here and now. WS however saw an opportunity to lead the market. Many of the competition went
bankrupt as their welders were rendered obsolete by the new, stronger steels.
In 2012 the company founded WS Engi- neering in the north of Germany and started a factory to engineer its welders and other tools.
The InvertaSpot GT was the first welder WS produced in response to OEM re- quests. The InvertaSpot GT Automatic de- tects the conditions at the joint, sets pa- rameters automatically and monitors the welding process.
You wouldn’t wonder why the OEM ap- proved tools and equipment are so expen- sive if you understood the process of de- veloping them and getting them approved in the first place. Not only are there the engineering costs, the destructive testing costs and then the approval process costs, but many of the brands that the company makes the equipment for are prestige and therefore not high volume cars. This means that the sales of the equipment won’t be high volume either.
Then there’s the complexity, each OEM’s specs are different. For instance, in the welders the software is unique, as are the livery and identification codes for each manufacturer or car group.
Another game changer took place back