InnoTrans 2022 (29)

This was the second time that ŽĎAS has participated at InnoTrans as an exhibitor. This well-known Czech engineering company from Žďár nad Sázavou celebrated 70 years of existence last year and its activities are focused on the supply of technological lines with forming machines for various applications in heavy engineering or railway and automotive industry, hydraulic presses, equipment for free forging, equipment for processing metal waste, etc.

The company has long been active in the field of supplying production lines and various components to the railway industry. The company's portfolio includes, for example, complete lines for the production of railway wheels, axle and buffer forging and, more recently, a workplace with a CDRO 300 press for automatic double-sided pressing of wheels onto axles.

ŽĎAS has recently delivered various lines, for example to GHH BONATRANS, Bohumín (production line for railway wheels, completed in 2021), to the Russian Uralvagonzavod, Nizhny Tagil (line for straightening and cooling of railway axles, completed in 2015) or for the Ukrainian company LUGCENTROGUS, Luhansk (line for forging of railway axles, completed in 2014).

ŽĎAS also acts as a certified supplier of components for rail transport. This includes, in particular, forged parts for railway superstructure, such as switch spikes and switch heart wedges, or semi-finished products for various types of axles, or the supply of bogie frames for trams.

These components were represented at the stand in Berlin in the form of a wheel made on a machine from ŽĎAS and a cast frame for a tram bogie. The latter is a novelty of 2021 and the batch production was destined for the ForCity Smart trams of the types 39T for Ostrava and 40T for Plzeň, and subsequently for the types 41T for Bonn and 45T for Brno, where the frame deliveries started this year and will continue next year.

The one-piece bogie frame offers advantages over a welded frame in terms of its performance and durability. The casting has a weight of around 1 t and dimensions of approximately 1,500 x 1,000 x 500 mm. The frames are cast in the foundry and machined at the Žďár nad Sázavou works. Machining programs were created for machining the entire part on the five-axis machining centre and special tools were selected for hard-to-reach areas in cooperation with ISCAR ČR (supplier of tools for chip machining, a branch of the parent Israeli company ISCAR), so that all these machining operations led to a significant reduction in machining time.