Interview with Enric Plusdur rosea

"As I have not had learning of mechanic, have applied technical that break diagrams. My advantage is that I have not had a learning that have marked me". It has spoken Enric Gibert, beat blue of workshop, ways of politician withdrawn, director of a skilled company in hard metal, Plusdur and many, a lot of years showing the mistaken that are those that sustain that a fresadora is to mill, and a lathe for tornear, and a rectificadora to rectify...
Gibert Approached to the mechanics without prejudices. Of this form invented a method to rectify without rectificadora, (the method Gibert, as no) that still use a lot of companies although it already has decades. In his extensive curriculum appear applications so shoot like cojinetes of air for IBM, profiles for swearwords of billiard, colgantes with closing by magnets or espoletas of mortar, and in general, a long list of favours or works done for others, that have given him a lot of satisfactions and little economic profit. Now it concentrates in Plusdur: "The inventiveness has to apply to own products", signals, and seems convinced.

More that an inventor I have been an adapter. I think that what I do is adapt and create new systems to work: in fact there is a system consists in making molds for screws working on a lathe.

In turn the lathe into a small grinding machine and work the hard metal with diamond. To do this I adapté small dentist diamond tools.

It has no depth. The laser can work with a depth of up to 20 mm, and is expensive. The laser can be used in very sophisticated pieces. Other techniques are also used as EDM, but only I know of a company to do so.

It is clear that I could have I devoted to repairing dies as a result this method which I invented, but my heart does not hold. Always liked that the subject is worth little and work have much added value, while the raw material in tooling - for manufacturers of metal hard - has an important value.

I could have predominated the benefits, devote myself to the arrays and have slowly led to other things, but I wanted to go too fast. However there is another problem is that perhaps I have lived the most revolutionary period in the industry and my best clients had to close. We now have 5-6 years of balance. But from the 1970s to 1995 it was a mess.

We do special hard metal punches: a new application in hard metal. In fact, five years ago very few people used it, so we introduce it in many companies. Not used because the hard metal was pressed and matrices were short. Could not be made until it appeared the hard metal extruded, allowing produce punches with lengths of up to 300 mm.
In fact, I was the first to make preparations for this new material through manufacturers that sold the product. I manipulé this raw and started to make preparations for cutting (reamers) tools and expanding this technique a little more, fabriqué also hallmarks.

Ten times more productivity than a normal punch and there are cases where can be multiplied by forty. The school of engineers of the University of Barcelona began to study the causes of this high productivity for five years. It was a project which he presented to the Centro de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) with our support and that of several companies, and who later received the accolade of the multinational Catalan AMES, he considered the interesting project when was consulted to the rspecto by the CSIC. Precisely, the University last week received a visit from a very important company in the world because of an article that was published on wear of hard metal.

It is a new application, which I have the patent in Spain, in which rosco metal hard and apply you a tip of diamond. The current system consists of a diamond tip solidarity to the handle. My system allows to exchange the wheels (and therefore possess teeth of several sizes and qualities). The hardest thing has been to find a supplier capable of working with this kind of toothache. Precisely, today I go to collect the first piece made with this system. It is the first time that this technique is used in Spain, although the Swiss time ago make it. The advantage of this system is that the hard metal is more resistant to bending than steel. I would now like to introduce this technique into the Basque country.

Has not followed a career say "conventional" inside the mechanics. How it resolved his problems of learning?

My training has indeed lasted many years. Force go doing various things in the end I have become a swab of diamond and this is not taught in any University. What I mean is that the technique that I have come to develop is very different to that is taught or used anywhere else in the world: normally used grinding of sintered diamond and I use electrolytic diamond wheels.

Some time ago and through the company AMES was working for IBM in the mechanization of bearings of air (air bearings). One of the heads of IBM's Tukson (Arizona), told me on the way as I did the piece that "there are people who have the ability to do things without money". To me this helped me because when I did punches also I used a very simple machinery, because it is the tool that works. The machine is important, but there are pieces that it all depends on the equipment and the tool.

One of the things that I've lost quite was in the manufacture of calibers. Towards calibers of hard metal and then, last year, I made a great discovery to make it perfect and at a lower cost. However, and although they had a special appearance, due to the crisis in the country, the people did not buy calibers.

It is obvious that I can retire professionally, although my goal is now to bring this new technology of rectifying (offshoots of hard metal thread) to various European countries and, if necessary, go to United States. But one thing is to create a system and the other is to sell it. Rather than invent what I want now is to sell

See also...

• "The man in the hole"