I just returned from a trip to Munich, Germany, where I was visiting my daughter and working with a colleague. As you might know, Hall in Tirol is only about a two hour drive south of Munich. I had a few open days and decided to make a personal roadtrip to the Felder factory.
A little backstory is in order here. My Felder sales representative, Fergus Cooke at the Sacramento store, once mentioned that if I found myself in Austria, he might be able to arrange a tour of the factory. I took him up on his offer. He contacted a sales colleague in Hall, Pinosh Kumar, who contacted me. We arranged a time to meet at the Felder factory.
I expected something formal such as a short guided tour with hard hats, canned talking points, etc. Instead, Pinosh guided me on an informal, 2.5-hour long, tour of the factory. Not only was the tour informal, but I received no safety lecture, was not required to sign a disclaimer stating that if I were stupid enough to fall into a machine, I would not blame Felder, and we didn¡¯t even wear a hard hat. (Nobody there did.) Instead, Pinosh and I chatted while he described what we were seeing and we both dodged forklifts.
?It was a blast!
1. We started in the main offices, which we walked through to get to the factory area. All of the offices are along one long hall, including the offices of the executives.? Engineering, production, marketing, and sales were all located along this hallway. The company was founded by Johann Felder in the mid-1950s. He recently passed away and the company is now run by his children and grandchildren. The company hierarchy is relatively flat. Colleagues greet each other, from high to low, with a simple, ¡°Hallo.¡± Pinosh pointed out that I had walked by Martin Felder as we made our way to the factory floor. Moreover, J. Felder¡¯s grandchildren work in all aspects of whatever part of the company most interests them, such as marketing or sales. There is no free ride, though it is expected from the start that the Felder relative will lead that part of the company. It is a family-owned company, after all.
2. Even though the buildings were not laid out this way, Pinosh made the point of showing me how a machine is made from start to finish. So we started in the building where lasers cut the raw material (sheets of steel) into the right shape. Then, workers would use big metal bending machines to bend the cut-out shapes. The machines were accompanied by computers; depending on which part was being bent, the program would indicate which bending tools to insert into the machine and a tool magazine would bring the appropriate tool to the factory worker. This is a theme I saw repeated on many of the machines.
3. The next step was to see the assembly of sub-parts of the machines. Here, they would use jigs to position the parts where they could be welded together. I saw several outriggers assembled for Felder sliders.
4. Once the main parts are assembled, they are powder coated in another building. The machine is hooked onto a ceiling-mounted sliding rail assembly that can move it through washing, drying, painting, and then baking (at 180 degrees celsius). This is where I learned that you can order your Felder tool in any color you like! Of course, there is some additional cost, but because each machine is tagged with an owner, with all of the?owner-specified customizations, they can change out the paint and you can get that pink A3-41 you¡¯ve always dreamed of!
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5. Next we visited an area where they make all sorts of parts for the equipment they sell. Most notably, here I saw how they manufacture the Silent Power cutting heads from circular steel blanks. The milling is done in CNCs. Tolerances are checked and the cutting heads are fussed over until they are perfect (or, I suppose, within some tolerance of perfection). I learned that there is not a machine that will install all those tungsten carbide cutting heads. Maybe they start new employees with screwing in the cutting heads as some sort of hazing ritual?
6. The final assembly floor was my favorite part of the tour. By this time, they have installed the machine onto the pallet on which it will be delivered to your house. The machines roll down this area several abreast. Factory workers have cubbies on both sides of this central work area from which they can draw the parts to install on the machines. The machines that are being worked on all differ. You might have a Felder brand table saw, followed by a Format4 thicknesser, followed by a Hammer A3 in line here. At the end of this assembly area, the machines are tested. This includes running wood through the machine. They had a large dust extraction unit in the testing area to which the tested machine would be hooked up and adjusted. Finally, the machines are wrapped in plastic and sent to the shipping area, which I did not see.
As part of the tour, we also stopped by a separate factory building where Felder does education. Here, Austrian students, some as young as 14, learn as part of their technical training. Like Germany, Austria has an education system in which students are placed on different paths depending on inclination and ability, with the end result being either attendance at university or a certificate and a job in industry. Felder participates in the training of students on the technical path. Felder educates cohorts of 15-20 students who are paid 50,000 euros a year by the government. In addition, I believe Felder provides a bonus. I was stunned by this information. Graduate students in the UC system aren¡¯t paid this much! When I get the chance, I¡¯ll talk to my Austrian colleague about the Austrian system and confirm the details from her. By the time I was at that part of the tour I was becoming tuckered out, so I may not have all the details about this correct. (Early in my trip I contracted a nasty stomach bug that dogged me the entire trip.)
After the factory tour, Pinosh and I drove in his personal car to the showroom, which is near to, but not adjacent to, the factory. This is likely the largest showroom of Felder products around. I attached a few photos of the showroom. We wandered around looking at?machines and chatting, but by this time I was feeling a little guilty about the amount of time Pinosh had spent with me. After about 20 minutes, we returned to the start of the tour and parted ways. The next morning, before returning to Munich, I came back to the showroom on my own so I could spend a more leisurely time checking out the machines. I chatted with a few salespeople there. One of them gave me a part that had broken on my Hammer K3. (The little plastic clip on the outrigger that fastens down the tape scale split on first use. I joked that I traveled 6000 miles for that replacement part.)
My sincerest thanks go to Pinosh for the great tour and his time. If you have the chance, I encourage you to travel to the Felder factory and arrange a tour. It was fun and educational!
Attached photos: Photography was not allowed on the factory floor. The photos of the older machines are from the office area. The other photos are from the showroom. I realized only while selecting photos to attach here that many of the photos seem to have the KF700 as the focal machine. This is the machine I'm currently lusting after. Mmmmm.
