MAHLE BEHR INDUSTRY IS THE LATEST ADDITION TO THE MAHLE GROUP. IT PRODUCES COOLING AND AIR CONDITIONING SYSTEMS FOR USE IN A VARIETY OF VEHICLES, ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS AT 6 INTERNATIONAL LOCATIONS. ONE OF THESE PRODUCTION PLANTS IS IN REICHENBACH, GERMANY. THIS IS WHERE COOLING AND AIR CONDITIONING SOLUTIONS FOR BUSES, CONSTRUCTION AND AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY ARE PRODUCED—AND FOR THE AUTOMOBILE AFTERMARKET TOO.
Behr Industry was founded in 1990 as a one hundred percent subsidiary of the German radiator manufacturer Behr and generated a number of locations over time. After the fall of the Berlin Wall the company initially expanded in the new federal states of former Eastern Germany. A traditional metal working factory was taken over in 1991 that had been producing heat exchangers since 1952 and had become the main supplier to the refrigeration and air conditioning industry in the former German Democratic Republic.
The location in Reichenbach, Saxony soon became the most important site for the production and assembly of cooling and air conditioning systems. Heat exchangers for construction and agricultural machinery as well as the production and assembly of cooling systems and air conditioning units became a key focus of production. This proved so successful that constant investments had to be made to satisfy the growing market demand.
Today MAHLE Behr Industry in Reichenbach employs around 320 people—and produces cooling and air conditioning systems for construction and agricultural machinery, buses, special vehicles as well as the aviation industry, cooling systems for rail vehicles and large motors in two large production halls covering an area of around 38,000 m2. The facility has five modern brazing furnaces, four of them with vacuum and one with Nocolok® technology—and is thus well prepared to meet the growing demand for OEM air conditioning and cooling components and to supply the aftermarket in the same uncompromising quality.
A brazing reader VACUUM BRAZING
Vacuum brazing is a process whereby materials are joined in a chamber—under a very low atmospheric pressure and controlled heating. This is why vacuum brazing takes place in a specially designed furnace. After heating the furnace up by electricity and lowering the pressure joining takes place in the brazing chamber in a vacuum. The Reichenbach plant produces only aluminium heat exchangers. Basic materials are hereby used that are coated with solder. The solder is used as a filler material to join the individual parts together. This is possible because the melting point of the solder is below that of the basic material, in other words the brazing process needs no further additives. The parts are soldered in the furnace according to a controlled temperature-time-vacuum curve. The solder solidifies during cooling so that the individual parts are then joined into one block. NOCOLOK®-BRAZING
Nocolok® is the trade name of a special flux used in aluminium brazing. The name stands for “Non corrosive lock”. During this brazing process individual parts of aluminium are soldered into a block in a furnace with a nitrogen atmosphere under the influence of temperature with a flux. |