Tobias Kleiber New Managing Director at C. Jentner GmbH Metallveredlung in Pforzheim.
"Quality and reproducibility speak for digital electroplating"
Mr Kleiber, you are a trained surface coater and technician and are now responsible for digitalized electroplating at C. Jentner alongside Managing Partner Chris Jentner. Is this a lifelong dream come true?
Yes, I can say that. The electroplating industry is not necessarily known for the kind of major investments that have been made here. Industry 4.0 is also not yet widespread. Since Chris Jentner introduced me to the company, I have been very impressed and enthusiastic about how Industry 4.0 is combined with classic electroplating here.
In which sectors is contract electroplating currently specialized?
We have a barrel and rack electroplating facility and are currently in the process of commissioning a strip electroplating facility. The current sectors are medical technology, automotive and mechanical engineering. We have also just acquired a customer in the luxury segment. This involves decorative electroplating. We are also currently in the process of obtaining DIN 9100 certification for aerospace and defense and have started our first projects in this area.
Where is the ultra-modern electroplating facility in Pforzheim heading?
We have identified the market for high-quality products, as our digitalization enables reproducibility independent of personnel. We collect millions of data records a day and can therefore track our racks digitally live, as each one is marked with a so-called UWB tag. This gives us an insight into the exposure times, temperature, currents and voltages to which the rack is exposed in the electrolyte. We therefore want to develop even more in the direction of high-quality industries. Such customers include the aerospace and defense industries.
Which coatings are currently possible?
C. Jentner offers a wide range of electroplating processes. We refine components with various precious metals such as silver, gold, platinum, palladium and rhodium as well as with base metals such as copper, nickel, tin, but also electroless nickel, chromating and anodizing. The electroplating line is a nickel-silver-tin system and will be used to coat parts for the electronics industry, among others.
What advantages does the new electroplating plant offer?
The most important argument is the quality and the reproducibility independent of the operator. With conventional electroplating plants, you always have to rely on the human factor. Of course, we do too - we only have qualified specialists, trained surface coaters and master electroplaters, in production, but digitalization allows us to constantly improve our processes by optimizing them based on data. If employee A is on vacation, employee B can use the data to achieve exactly the same finishing result. Digitalization helps us a lot to meet our high quality standards.
You are a technician. Training is weakening. Why does the industry need technicians?
Trained surface coaters only scratch the surface in the industry. The technician offers a deeper understanding of processes and electrolytes, among other things, in two years of full-time training, as I did in Schwäbisch Gmünd. You are given tools such as employee management, training and commercial topics. You gain a technical college entrance qualification and can do a business administration course. These are the basics for a management position. The technician is therefore fundamentally important for the industry.
INFO
Tobias Kleiber
(to the right of Chris Jentner) is a trained surface coater and electroplating technician. Among other things, he has worked for an electroplating system manufacturer in gravure die production, where he commissioned electroplating lines in China, India, Taiwan and Jordan as a process engineer and solved technical problems. Before joining C. Jentner as Managing Director, he worked as a sales manager for an aerospace company, for which he again spent a lot of time abroad, including in Singapore and Shanghai. Tobias Kleiber is married and lives in Ettlingen near Karlsruhe.
