oscillating

Tracing Swiss-made tools and Bosch’s place in the global market

Written on November 14, 2011 at 2:32 pm , by Bob Hunter

My whirlwind tour of Bosch’s corporate offices and manufacturing facilities in Europe continued from Germany into Switzerland.

Like most large companies in the world, the Robert Bosch Company has grown not only through innovation and development of its own product lines, but also through acquisitions of existing companies. For example, in recent years Bosch has acquired Sia Abrasives, a Swiss-based company making sandpaper and other abrasives for many industries, and also Freud, the Italian business that makes cutting tools (saw blades, router bits, shaper cutters, etc.) and produces its own carbide.

My next stop was the former Scintilla company headquarters in Solothurn, Switzerland. Read more

TOOL NEWS: Rockwell shows new cordless tools to WOOD Magazine

Written on June 18, 2010 at 9:32 am , by Bob Hunter

If you’re not familiar with the line of new Rockwell tools—sold at Menards home centers as well as online retailers such as Amazon.com—then let me bring you up to date. For decades, Rockwell was one of the standards in woodworking machinery, and later changed its name to Delta Machinery (after starting out as Delta back in the 1930s). Now another U.S.-based company is licensing the Rockwell name for its own brand of portable power tools.

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