Guide Rails

The tongue-and-groove joints on the sides of laminate flooring planks are manufactured in a single, extremely fast operation with minimal deviations (in the range of thousandths of a millimeter). For this process, the individual planks are fed through the milling machine by a rolling block-link chain. This chain runs on high-precision guide rails (guide tracks), which form the geometric backbone of the machine and thus guarantee the consistently high quality and precision of the laminate flooring.

WELSCH INDUSTRIAL's guide rails ensure that the rolling block link chain maintains a perfectly straight line and a constant height along its entire length. This is absolutely crucial because the milling tools (spindles) are mounted in a fixed position relative to the rail. Only in this way can the tongue-and-groove profile be milled with the required accuracy in the micrometer range. The guide rails bear the entire load of the feed system (chain and chain plates) as well as the weight and pressure of the laminate workpiece being processed.

We manufacture our guide rails from extremely carefully selected and high-alloy tool steels, which are hardened and precision ground. They are extremely hard, dimensionally stable, and wear-resistant. Because the double-end profilers are very long, the rails often need to be assembled from multiple segments. The joints of these segments are angled, precision ground, and aligned during assembly so that the chain experiences virtually no jerking or deviation when passing over them.