Kumar Ramachandra, Founder Director, Wintegral Engineering Pvt Ltd
What are the unique solutions, services & products from Wintegral Engineering?
Wintegral Engineering is India’s first and only company providing indexable cutter repair services for the CNC and conventional machining industry. Our revolutionary repair service reclaims and refurbishes all types of worn out, broken or crashed high precision, expensive, indexable cutters at an incredible 10% to 50% cost of a new cutter thereby saving crores of rupees annually on replacements. Damaged indexable cutters are restored back to micron tolerances and is backed by a 100% performance guarantee to work like new. Other than this, in 2005, Wintegral also introduced the first ever niche micro-welding services for tight tolerance die-tools and mould repair in India that has resulted in savings in millions for the Indian plastic injection moulding and pressure die-casting industry.
What are the latest trends when it comes to reclamation, repair and re-use of technologies? How do you see the awareness level of such solutions in the India market?
Wintegral Engineering is the only indexable repair and reclamation facility in India right now. Since there are no other reclamation facilities to repair indexable cutters and also since our services are quite recent, there is a just a wafer thin awareness about such a solution in the domestic market.
Can you provide the market size of global and Indian refurbishing market?
The current Indian cutting tool market is in the region of Rs 2,200 crore. The indexable cutters market could be estimated to be around 20% of this. In our experience, a majority of the indexable tools are repairable not once but, at least twice or maybe even thrice. So, it presents a niche market that is quite attractive to an SME like us. The Industry is witnessing a slowdown right now but, this slowdown is good news for our reclamation business.
After repairing/refurbishing, what is the efficiency level of a product when compared to a new one?
All indexable cutters we repair are guaranteed to work like new.
How will you justify the cost for repairing? How soon can a customer expect to recover the ROI?
We repair Indexable Cutters at a fraction of the cost of a new cutter. Depending on the type of cutter, amount of damage, etc. we assure a dramatic 50 to 90% savings on replacements. So, the savings are very obvious especially, since it works just like new even after repair. Our cutter repair program, if employed diligently, can save crores of rupees and bring down the cost per machining a component. This is of great relevance in the current tough times wherein the industry is struggling to reduce operational costs to stay profitable.
As the awareness level for repaired/refurbished indexable cutters is low, how do you deal with such a market?
At this point of time, we believe the best way to spread awareness is to directly sell our services by meeting customers and make them understand the cost advantages, validate a repaired tool at the customer’s facility and work out the cost per component savings.
Do you operate in other countries as well? What are the latest trends in refurbishing technology globally?
The repair process took us almost three years to develop before we could make a commercial launch. Some of the techniques are based on years of experience in machining. It’s a proprietary process and we are working on refining it all the time. Tools such as workholding, fixturing, quality testing, etc. required for the repair process are not something that are readily available off-the-shelf so, we had to spend a lot of time to design and develop them in-house. The in-house tooling for the repair process is designed such that even people with least experience can be trained. Because of this, we are keen on entering into partnerships with small companies outside India, especially South-East Asia where there are no indexable cutter repair facilities available but also present a very good market.
There are many companies offering indexable cutter repairs in USA and Europe. The main reason for this is the availability of highly skilled technical manpower which is a major bottleneck in India and some of the South-East Asian nations.
What are the emerging sector’s for machine tool industry?
The Aerospace industry is witnessing action because of the rise in demand for newer materials such as composites, titanium, etc. which are all relatively new in India.
According to you what kind of solutions customers are looking for?
Customers are very keen on cutting costs. Nothing new about this. However, customers are also very fastidious and demand a high level of precision. We understand that none of our customers are willing to trade a few rupees savings for top quality.
What are your future plans?
Like already mentioned, we are keen on entering into partnerships outside India where, we can set up a facility and provide technology to repair indexable cutters. These are very early days for indexable cutter repairs in India so we plan to grow at an exponential pace in the next few years in the domestic market.
Email: nishant@mfgtechupdate.com
