The winding machine

Maybe most of you have no idea how historical swords are made. In our company, we didn’t know either, and we thought it was all handmade by rough guys with beards, for example. Two statements of this are true. They are tough guys with beards, but what they do is they don’t forge hot iron but use modern machinery and manufacturing technology.

We’re happy to have helped them automate one of their manual processes with the second version of the winder. It makes it easier to wrap the sword handles with twine. This speeds up the process and eliminates errors. We used milled aluminum parts in the design, precision-engineered 3D printed nylon carbon and PETG parts, and held the whole thing on ITM profiles. The most intricate and beautiful feature is clearly the rotating head with the slide that holds the sword blade. Control of the three servomotors with feedback is provided by a Siemens 1200 PLC. Safety has not been forgotten either, where the process stops automatically when winding is complete and there is also the option of a safety shutdown. And what about the bearded guys? “Hmm, can be” Great enthusiasm they can not show.

It turns out that automation is not to be feared even with historical stuff. They don’t need to lose their old-world charm at all, and they’re becoming a lot more accessible to everyone.