Zoller Celebrates 80 Years of Innovation

Zoller celebrated its 80th anniversary recently at its North American headquarters located in Ann Arbor, MI, with a three-day open house. The celebration brought together manufacturers, partners, industry leaders, as well as members of the media, to explore the future of smart manufacturing while honoring the company’s legacy of innovation, precision, and customer-driven solutions. The event featured immersive technology demonstrations, expert-led presentations, and customer success stories that illustrated the benefits of Zoller solutions, from CAM to part. 

Gear Technology sat down with Alexander Zoller, president of Zoller Inc., to discuss tool management, AI, and the future of the metalworking industry during the show. 

“Our company has always provided solutions for presetting, measuring, and inspecting cutting tools. We collaborate with our customers to discuss what they need and what we can do to provide automated solutions as well as user independent products that are key to their success,” said Zoller. 

Measuring and Automation Technology

Roboset, for example, loads a Zoller measuring machine around the clock completely autonomously. The tools are measured with high-precision, automatically and autonomously on the presetting and measuring machine in transmitted light and recorded in detail. 

“We have our standardized tool presetting and measuring machines that we can automate. Our Roboset tool machine can clean the tool, dry it off, manage all inspection tasks,” Zoller said. “This is a very impressive setup we offer in reference to cutting tool inspection.”

Thanks to the robots’ automatic path correction during loading, Roboset—in combination with the Zoller Venturion—is tailored to the customer’s specific production processes, ideal for direct use in every CNC manufacturing environment and for measuring with high tool throughput.

Automation and software will continue to gain ground not just for the technology advantages, but what these solutions can offer in terms of labor challenges. 

“Labor shortage is still the greatest issue in manufacturing today especially as more and more skilled workers reach the retirement age,” Zoller said. “Our global customers are having a tough time replacing these workers as well as their experience. These challenges can be solved if the processes within these organizations are standardized,” Zoller added. 

Setting Tool Standards for 80 Years

The company was founded as a mechanical workshop in 1945 by Alfred Zoller in the south of Germany, developing into one of the world’s leading companies in innovative presetting and measuring machines as well as measuring, inspection, and management software for cutting tools.

“The only measuring tools we started with in the beginning were to ensure a machine tool was making the correct parts. Through the years, the company now offers a huge spectrum of tool management solutions. Zoller now manages components, tooling, fixtures, NC programming, stock, etc. And today we can share all this data and information with machine tools, inventory, and CAM systems,” Zoller said. 

Zoller is surprised so many organizations are still struggling with tool management in 2025. He is adamant that a little research and some conversations on implementation would enhance the accuracy and efficiency of several small to medium-sized job shops. 

“Companies clearly see the challenges their facing every day, but they do not always seek out the necessary solutions to streamline their operations. How can you run a shop floor effectively if you do not have tool management software in place? How can you work without an ERP system? We see several organizations struggling in these areas today.”

Many presentations and conversations returned to the subjects of AI, automation and IIoT solutions during the open house. 

“AI is the next step. There will be more AI in our products and technologies moving forward,” Zoller said. “Also, IIoT trends involving automating the software, setting up the database, making our customers jobs easier and faster, these are trends we’ll be looking at in the future.”

Currently, one immediate challenge involves machining hard materials.

“Tool life only has an average time of two to four minutes,” Zoller said. “You need to process, inspect, assemble, and regrind these tools and it is a huge undertaking. As the materials evolve in automotive applications, the tooling challenges will evolve as well. Aerospace is another area with many challenges. They are going to need 45,000 new airplanes in the next 20 years, for example. It's an exciting time to be involved in manufacturing as we help our customers reduce downtime, drive efficiency and set new standards in innovation."

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