© Photo | © Graef

Cutting-edge coop­er­a­tion

Graef universal slicing machines are depend­able helpers in home kitchens, restau­rants and the food industry. Compact motors from ebm-papst make the slicers quiet, fast and durable.


Fresh meat, cheese or ham – there is almost no food that universal slicers from Graef can’t cut into the thinnest of slices with ease. Neither contin­uous oper­a­tion nor contact with pieces of gristle are enough to wear them out. Christoph Bergmann, a product manager at Graef, knows better than anybody how hard the slicer’s motor has to work. “We used to make the drive motors for the blades ourselves, then we had the same supplier for complete motors for a long time. But they no longer met our stan­dards for dura­bility or work­man­ship, and their costs had increased too much.”

Custom fit

During its search for a reli­able and more econom­ical alter­na­tive for house­hold appli­ances, Graef came across the KM 43 series of capac­itor motors from ebm-papst, which features high power, long service life and a compact design. However, the motor needed to slim down at the edges in order to fit into the slicer’s design. “So we modi­fied the motor’s bearing brackets to make them a perfect fit for the machine’s housing,” says Harald Böhm, Key Account Manager at ebm-papst. In addi­tion, ebm-papst uses a worm gear solu­tion instead of a simple gear on the shaft, making the trans­mis­sion of power to the blade much quieter.

We began looking for a powerful drive motor that was compact enough to fit in the existing machine.

Christoph Bergmann, product manager at Graef

Since Graef was pleased with the capac­itor motor’s perfor­mance, it approached ebm-papst with another chal­lenge. Its universal slicing machine for commer­cial appli­ca­tions is avail­able in a model with an auto­matic carriage that effort­lessly moves the mate­rial to be sliced back and forth over the blade. For the carriage, Graef used a motor whose power was no longer suffi­cient to meet its customers’ increasing demands on the machine’s speed. “So we began looking for a powerful drive motor that was compact enough to fit in the existing machine,” says Bergmann. Now an EC motor from the ECI 63 series moves the carriage back and forth up to 70 times per minute.

Effi­ciency for the future

Graef also appre­ci­ates the ECI 63’s high effi­ciency. “Right now lower energy consump­tion is a nice side effect,” says Bergmann. “But in the future, big super­market chains will be taking a closer look at the energy used by the machines they buy. Using the ECI 63 has resulted in a big improve­ment that makes our machines even more energy-effi­cient.”

Required fields: Comment, Name & Mail (Mail will not be published). Please also take note of our Privacy protection.


Additional product information can be found here:

Capacitor motors

Capacitor motors feature a simple, robust design