Sharpening saw blades South Korean style

Based in Hwaseong, on the Yellow Sea coast around 50km from Seoul, DCM supplies its products worldwide to all industries involved with sawing and cutting metal. Primarily this covers steel pipe production as well as automotive manufacture, shipbuilding and the aerospace industry. The company uses a dozen Vollmer machines for manufacturing its carbide-tipped circular saw blades.

Some of its most recent acquisitions include the CHD, CHF and CHP sharpening machines from Vollmer, with these machines processing carbide-tipped circular saw blades precisely in a single set-up.

Father and son team An Youngmoon and An Stephan are the two managing directors of the company.

“At the end of the 1970s, I was teaching at a vocational school and noticed that the circular saw blades were always blunt when sawing metal cylinders and often broke,” states An Youngmoon, managing director and founder of DCM. “This was my motivation to develop high-quality circular saw blades that permanently withstand the tough conditions of metal cutting.”

This idea soon led to the development of the first high-speed steel circular saw blades manufactured by DCM. Shortly thereafter friction saw blades followed. These blades have a high peripheral speed and are therefore ideal for cutting steel pipes and profiles. Very high temperatures are instigated with these circular saw blades due to the high speeds and the friction created between saw blade and metal. The separation cut becomes a mixture of sawing and melting with what is known as the ‘red-heat’ effect according to DCM.

“Before we developed our first friction saw blades at the end of the 1980s; this type of saw was imported to South Korea. Today we supply almost three quarters of all friction saw blades to the domestic metalworking industry market,” adds An Stephan. “Our aim is to become the leading provider of circular saws in South Korea and to continue to grow on an international level.”

At the beginning of the 1990s, DCM first developed carbide-tipped circular saw blades. From the outset, the South Korean company relied on sharpening machines from Vollmer. At this time, An Youngmoon spent time at Vollmer’s headquarters in Biberach, Germany for three weeks of training, an investment that was to successfully pay off for DCM. Today the company supplies circular saw blades worldwide to all industry sectors involved with sawing and cutting of metal.

DCM uses a dozen Vollmer machines for manufacturing its carbide-tipped circular saw blades. The company purchased its first sharpening machines from Biberach at the start of the 1990s. Some of its most recent acquisitions include the CHD, CHF and CHP sharpening machines. With these machine concepts carbide-tipped circular saw blades can be sharpened precisely in one set-up. In combination with an ND handling system and appropriate loading carriage for automatic tipping, the machines are ready to use around the clock.

“South Korea has since developed into a high-end market for sharpening machines in the metals and composites sector, and the demand for service and user support is growing,” states Dr Stefan Brand, CEO of the Vollmer Group. “With the subsidiary we set up in Seoul in 2016, we can look after customers such as DCM even more intensively and competently than before.”

The Vollmer Group employs 800 workers worldwide, with around 550 of these at its main headquarters in Biberach in Germany. It also has sites Austria, Great Britain, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the USA, Brazil, Japan, China, South Korea, India and Russia.

The company invests around eight to 10% of its turnover in the research and development of new technologies and products.

Vollmer www.vollmer-group.com