Two innovations a year for a place in Europe's top three

As a manufacturing company, you can never be satisfied with a place in the middle of the pack. Only the top is good enough. For that you have to work hard and keep pushing your limits. At Q-Fin, ambition and an endless drive for improvement are in the DNA. Ten years ago they started working from the idea that the ideal deburring machine did not yet exist. That didn't do them any harm, as turnover increased by double digits every year. They have since outgrown the status of start-up. In the Netherlands they play at the top, but in the rest of Europe they say they still have a whole world to win. By 2025, Q-Fin wants to be one of the top three European producers of deburring machines.

Innovation in the blood

"The story of Q-Fin begins in 2012. Anton Bax was looking for a new machine for deburring small workpieces. However, he did not find anything that fully met his needs. Therefore, together with Koen de Waard - who brought 20 years of experience in deburring technology - he developed his own deburring machine. F200 was our first machine. Today we have become a specialist in the development, production and sale of machines for deburring, rounding and finishing metal sheet parts and in installations for the extraction of grinding dust," explains business officer Joost Kouwenbergh. "This all takes place in Bergeijk, Brabant, where we have set ourselves the task of introducing at least two innovations every year. To do this, we obviously listen to the customers' needs first, because what good are innovations if no one needs them? Do you know that in many cases we come to the conclusion that customers themselves do not realize how many hours they spend deburring, edge breaking and finishing. After our analysis, this becomes really clear to them and they see that a suitable deburring machine can pay for itself in a very short time. Moreover, the quality of their finishing is significantly improved."

The range today includes many different semi- and fully automatic deburring machines. Hard runners include the TopGrinder, F200 XL and F1200 machine, each with its own features. In 2020, Q-Fin released the DS600 and DS1200, which remove slag from plasma-cut pieces before further machining. The Q2S1200, a reversing unit for automatically reversing sheet metal, has already been successfully deployed at three customers, even though the manufacturer initially thought the market would have no need for such a reversing unit. The ROI is only one and a half years. Q-Fin also builds its own wet-acting extraction systems which they combine with the finishing machines, thus ensuring effective and safe extraction of the grinding dust. The latest introduction, at the EuroBLECH in Hanover, is the 5-station SER1200 Multibrush. This all-in-one machine can, among other things, put a directionless finish, line finish and rounding with Radius 2 mm on a workpiece.

Appearance and intuitive operation always good

This product range is widely displayed in Q-Fin's showroom. Through the glass facade, daylight falls generously inside. This is the kind of presentation customers like to see. 

"The metalworking industry has changed. Customers no longer want a dusty environment. They prefer to work in a clean environment. Q-Fin's machines contribute to this and with them customers show that they are one step ahead with their production process," the business officer continues. "Appearance is important, as is intuitive operation. Our machines have to work as autonomously as possible, regardless of who is operating them. So we are constantly developing software and systems for handling around the machines. An operator only has to select the program via a multilingual and intuitive HMI touch screen or via a barcode scanner that can read the information from the ERP package. Constant quality is guaranteed this way and operator errors are eliminated."

Ambition in abundance

Q-Fin currently has 33 employees. The company primarily supplies machines in Europe, but also, for example, in Australia and the United States. In Germany, they are also gaining a foothold. 

"We do not sit still and play at Champions League level in developing, producing and selling deburring machines. These systems stand out in terms of processing speed, ease of operation and price per product," concludes Joost Kouwenbergh. "We are convinced that we have the most innovative finishing machines. Now we just need to let the rest of the world know this."