The barrels of hunting and sporting rifles are precision components. That is why touch probes from Blum-Novotest have been installed on many lathes and milling machines in the barrel production facilities of Blaser Group GmbH. They play to their strengths both in dimensionally accurate production and in automation.

Blaser has dedicated an entire factory in Isny in the German region of Allgäu to the production of barrels. The company has significantly expanded the production capacity of the facilities in recent years. The scene is predominated by a large number of CNC-controlled turning and milling centres as well as automated production lines, which are operated by 75 employees in different shifts. The work is complex: The Blaser Group produces 7,000 different barrel variants in 80 different calibres. The calibre is also the outer diameter of the bullet, meaning it defines the inner diameter of a barrel. “We managed to greatly reduce our throughput times last year. In addition to an expansion of machine capacities and the achievement of automation potentials, precision in production processes of course also contributed to this reduction,” explains Martin Giray, who as plant manager is responsible for barrel production. “We are also constantly working on improvements and testing new processes such as the one-piece flow.”