§ 01
Test on real material.
Volume I · The House
The
House.
A family of engineers, since 1863.
Anno
MDCCCLXIII
One workshop, one principle, one small town in the Odenwald. The drawings have been passed forward through five generations of the same family.
Plate III
Works at Hardheim, Odenwald.
The same address since 1863. Walldürner Straße 50, between the river Erf and the forest.
§ Lede
Hardheim is a small market town in the Odenwald, half an hour by road from Würzburg, hidden in a fold of forest and farmland. There is a river called the Erf, a market square, a yellow church, and on the eastern edge of the town a long low works belonging to a family of engineers who have been answering the same question for one hundred and sixty three years. How does a pile of grains, dust and liquid become a usable material. The answer is a single patented principle, drawn in 1903, refined daily ever since.
§ Chronicle
A long
chronicle.
Ten entries from the house notebooks, in the order they were written.
1863
A workshop in Hardheim.
Gustav Eirich opens a small mechanical workshop in a Franconian market town in the Odenwald, on the road between Würzburg and Heidelberg.
1903
The patent.
The counter rotation principle is granted its first patent. A pan turning against a tool, two independent motors, one carefully governed encounter.
1924
Across the borders.
The first machines leave Hardheim for foundries and refractory works in neighbouring countries. The house begins to write protocols in two languages.
1956
Sons and successors.
The third generation enters the works. Family ownership remains, the principle remains, the drawings are passed forward.
1972
The Technikum opens.
A dedicated test hall is built so that customers can run their own real feedstock on the actual machine they would buy. The protocol becomes the unit of trust.
1989
Mills join the apparatus.
Bead, attritor and tower mills are added to the catalogue, the same patient discipline now applied to ultra fine grinding.
2008
Evactherm.
The vacuum mixing system enters serial production. Mixing, drying and cooling collapse into a single chamber, oxygen excluded at the source.
2015
Lithium arrives.
The first cathode active material trials at the Technikum. The same intensive mixer the foundries use now serves the gigafactory line.
2021
QualiMaster.
The full suite of digital quality instruments is released. Sensors at the tool, sensors at the wall, a console in another country.
2026
Six languages, seven continents.
One hundred and sixty three years on, one principle, one house, one small town in the Odenwald.
§ Values
Four
house maxims.
§ 02
Scale is not a recipe.
§ 03
Silence before speed.
§ 04
A protocol, not a promise.
§ Numbers
The house,
in six figures.
All real, all drawn from the brief. The house has never sold the round number it could not also draw on the bench.
1863.
Founded in Hardheim
6.
Languages spoken in the house
70+.
Years of plant engineering
12,000 L.
Largest production mixer
0.1 L.
Smallest laboratory mixer
Hardheim.
Walldürner Straße, Odenwald
Colophon · The House
Bring the material.
We will mix it.
A letter to the house is answered within two working days, in any of six languages.
Write to Hardheim