Nagel Cuts Tool Design Time by 80% Using Siemens Solid Edge

The Custom Honing Challenge

Nagel Technologies GmbH builds high‑precision honing and superfinishing machines for customers who expect micron‑level tolerances and fully integrated process chains. When a pharmaceutical OEM required concentricity within 1 µm across a 40 mm bore, Nagel had to engineer a complete solution—custom tooling, clamping, measurement, robotic handling, and on‑line inspection—in weeks instead of months.

The bottleneck was tool design. Before deploying Siemens’ Designcenter Solid Edge, a single honing tool body required 8–10 hours of CAD work. Engineers modeled each body individually, re‑calculated dimensions for minor tweaks (bore diameter changes often triggered a full redesign), and then produced manufacturing drawings by hand. At a production volume where 30–40 custom tools per month were ordered, the engineering load became unsustainable. Erkan Hodza, head of design and quality for tooling and Ecohone machines, told us: “We were spending eight to ten hours programming and preparing a single tool body for manufacturing. When you are producing custom tools constantly, that time adds up quickly.”

Parametric CAD as the Way Out

Nagel switched to Solid Edge’s parametric workflow in early 2023. The switch required restructuring the company’s part library, defining driven dimensions for critical features (bore dia., head length, guide‑rod spacing), and automating drawing generation with custom templates.

The payoff was immediate. Tool body programming now averages one hour per part, a reduction of roughly 80 % compared with the previous manual process. Because Solid Edge maintains associativity between model, drawing, and BOM, a change in the bore diameter automatically propagates through all documentation. “We eliminated the manual check‑and‑redraw step,” Hodza noted. “Design errors dropped, and our engineers can spend that saved time on more complex integration work.”

The parametric approach also let Nagel standardize sub‑components while still delivering custom configurations. By creating a master model for the Ecohone tool head, engineers can swap chuck inserts, measurement probes, and guide sleeves through a “configure‑then‑generate” workflow. That speeds part‑family management without sacrificing the bespoke nature of each solution.

Measured Impact on Delivery and Quality

Since adopting the new CAD workflow, Nagel trimmed average project lead times by 25 %. Tooling procurement, once a critical‑path item, now keeps pace with machine assembly. On the pharmaceutical bore project, the team delivered a fully instrumented honing cell within six weeks—well inside the customer’s eight‑week deadline.

Error metrics also improved. The first‑article defect rate for custom tooling fell from 3.2 % to 0.8 % over a six‑month window. In‑process inspection data show that the automated dimension‑checking in Solid Edge catches 96 % of tolerance deviations before a CAM program is generated, reducing scrap and rework costs.

The ROI is concrete: the software license plus retraining cost about €120 k, balanced against a projected annual saving of €380 k in engineering labor and scrap reduction. Payback period sits just under four months.

M4S TAKE

My take: AI claims need scrutiny. The useful implementations reduce cycle time or defect rates in measurable ways. Vague promises about 'optimization' without specific metrics are usually marketing.

Simon McLoughlin