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Brazilian company ZEMA has been a staple in the grinding machine industry since 1953, shortly after the first machines surfaced. This certainly says something about the company as they have a long-standing presence, specializing in the design and production of CNC grinding machines. Die Casting
ZEMA, owned by the JUNKER Group, manufactures CNC grinding machines for the automotive industry as well as for diverse industrial sectors, such as grinding components for the aerospace industry, agriculture and steel industries, among others. Their machines consist of more than 5,000 components, so designing and manufacturing them is no small task. Currently, Zema has more than 35,000 Solid Edge drawings being managed on the Teamcenter platform. ZEMA uses Siemens’ Solid Edge for 3D design and Teamcenter for collaboration and data management, in addition to other solutions.
ZEMA’s engineering team designs all the components for the CNC grinding machines, including the casted parts such as the machine bed and column and their casting mold, the manufactured steel parts and sheet metal parts, while outsourcing some commercial components to suppliers.
The first NC machines date back to the 1940s. John T. Parsons is credited with inventing the first NC machine in 1949 with help from aircraft engineer Frank L. Stulen, which was used to machine helicopter blades using mathematically developed aero foil shapes. A group of researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology then developed the first CNC machine in 1952.
Today CNC continues to be a popular manufacturing process to help manufacture components for planes, trains and automobiles.
“ZEMA transitioned from using 2D drawings generated from AutoCAD to Solid Edge in 2010,” says Edward Coltri, engineering general manager at ZEMA.
Coltri was in a different position with ZEMA at the time, and his colleague says it took the design team about three months to get up and running with Solid Edge with the help from their local reseller, PLMX. They were surprised how quickly it went.
Coltri says PLMX was the primary reason that ZEMA chose Solid Edge, in addition to the capabilities of the software, and was very supportive through the transition period. He says the feedback from the design team is that the learning curve for Solid Edge was quick, and that “Solid Edge is easy and quick to work with, and with the updates, it keeps getting better with each version.”
Over the years, ZEMA has released various models of their machines, and their customers regularly come back to negotiate with ZEMA to retrofit their machines. Because it is an older machine, the original drawings were created in a different format than Solid Edge. The migration to the new Teamcenter solution made it easier to manage this legacy data.
The company has been using Teamcenter since 2022, and last year were able to incorporate all the data from one of their latest machine designs into Teamcenter. Coltri says originally it took about eight months to use Teamcenter to its full potential.
“With Solid Edge, we are able to easily convert a drawing and provide a 3D model, which is one advantage of the software,” Coltri says.
It’s been their go-to tool, not only for collaborating internally, but also for when external suppliers send neutral formats as these can be read by Solid Edge and stored in Teamcenter for easy review.
“Solid Edge data can be easily exchanged with other software from our suppliers,” says Coltri. “Teamcenter is on the desktop and the data is coming from a local main server. Other features we appreciate are the interface between CAD and CAM, and checking for interference between machine groups. We also use it for virtual reality, video creation and simulation.”
Teamcenter is also integrated with their shop floor to aid in producing the parts and in the assembly of the machines. Clashes between parts are caught by Solid Edge.
With Teamcenter, the ZEMA team can easily create a bill of materials and put that into their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
Coltri says they are currently working with PLMX to integrate set drawings and lists of materials with external systems, and with the automatic loading of information into the company’s ERP system.
Overall, he says, “we are very happy with the software from Siemens. And we have very good support from PLMX.”
If you’re interested in grinding machines, ZEMA offers a full range of options. The company is based in São Paulo, Brazil, and currently has around 105 employees. They typically produce about 25 machines per year. They use the JUNKER Group’s international distribution and service network, and operate mainly for automotive and tool customers.
Their corundum grinding machines fulfill the requirements of series production for a wide range of different workpieces. The CNC grinding machines grind elements such as flanges and journals on crankshafts, as well as gear, turbocharger and cardan shafts with the utmost precision and reliability.
ZEMA produces NUMERIKA and KARGO brands. See here for more information on ZEMA’s grinding machines.
Learn more about Solid Edge from Siemens.
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