WA Branch Technical Meeting - 8 July 2024 Visit to Hofmann Engineering

Source: Hofmann Engineering

Hofmann Engineering was founded in Perth in 1969 and has since become an icon of manufacturing in WA. In 2014 was awarded the Materials Australia Claude A Stewart Medal MA for its a significant contribution to the industrial practice of metallurgy.

It had been 12 years since the last WA Branch visit to Hofmann’s and members and guests were welcomed to the premises by Carlos Fortuna, Product Manager Defence and Rail Systems. A guided tour followed an introductory overview of Hofmann Engineering by Karl Hofmann, Product Engineer and Erich Hofmann, Managing Director,

Hofmann Engineering has its head office in Perth Western Australia, and has manufacturing sites in Melbourne, Bendigo and Newcastle as well as overseas in Peru, Chile, South Africa and North America. It is a family-owned business and operates debt free. It has a $220m turnover and employs about 600 personnel world-wide. It also employs about 80 apprentices.

The guided tour of the Bassendean operation highlighted its world class facilities for design and manufacture with a particular specialisation in gears and gearboxes. It has extensive CAD and CAM design facilities and fabrication, heat treatment, inspection, metrology and metallurgical laboratory facilities. There are several large metrology rooms in the workshop equipped with Co-ordinate Measuring Machines.

The facilities are designed for moderately sized to very large fabrication and machining and inspection, all supported by CAD and CAM and design engineering staff. All machines are CNC controlled, including large hobbing and grinding CNC machines for all sizes of gear modules and forms such as spur, helical, double helical, spiral bevel, hypoid etc are in operation. The mining and wind power industries are major customers and the plant has capacity to build up to 15 metre diameter gears for mining and mineral processing applications.

The large-scale fabrication facilities include 6000 tonne plate rolls which can bend 220mm thick by 3700 wide steel plate (hardness of 390 BHN). The site has specialised welding capacity for high carbon alloy steel with appropriate procedures for QC.

Hofmann’s heat treatment facilities are the largest in Australia with a total of 15 furnaces covering all aspects of modern heat treatment such as gas carburising, nitrocarburising, quench and tempering. Induction hardening equipment is used in various locations in the plant.

This was a fascinating tour and The WA branch is grateful for Hofmann’s invitation.