HEINZ KRÄHENBÜHL, HUTTWIL, SWITZERLAND

Heinz Krähenbühl founded his PRO-CAM CNC business in the small Swiss village of Huttwil nearly 20 years ago. Right from the start, he specialised in offering customers a flexible approach to the handling of large components.

When I started out on my own nearly 20 years ago, I decided to focus on size. My first CNC machine was able to handle items that were six metres long, which was huge at the time and quite unusual in Switzerland. I recognised that dealing with larger items would be a specialisation that would differentiate me from most of the other machining shops. I’ve stayed with that idea ever since. We can now handle items that are 16 metres long, and we’ve just put in a CNC machine that can deal with components that are 3 metres square and 4.3 metres high.

We’re a small company with 15 staff. You would usually expect to find machines such as ours in companies with 100 or 150 staff. However, our size means that we’re flexible and that we can respond more rapidly to market requirements.

Seco Tools has a special position here. When I started out, it was just me and my machine in an old cowshed in the middle of nowhere and only Seco could be bothered to find the way. Since then, our relationship has developed. I know that I’m always up to date with the latest technology, and they are very quick to solve problems.