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Improving Changeover Efficiency and Safety

Part flattness being checked
Part flatness (shown here being checked), which used to be controlled partially by the feed-line equipment and partially by the grind profile of the punch that makes the part, now is controlled without having to pull the tools and regrind the punches, which was killing die life.
“Changeover times with the GSW equipment are faster—by 10 to 20 percent—and the overall operation is more convenient,” Beckman reports. “And because our workers no longer have to wrestle the ends of the coil with pry bars and hammers, changeover is safer than ever before. When we break the coil bands, the line’s hydraulic holddown arms keep everything contained.”

The firm plans to soon install a coil-joining system to weld the trailing edge of one coil to the leading edge of the next staged coil. “Once we can join the coil ends,” Beckman explains, “we’ll save the time of having to thread steel through our existing tooling, which is probably half of the time spent during coil changeover. We worked with GSW and designed the system to allow for this retrofit.”

Material Savings is Key

“Productivity is not the biggest savings on this particular line,” Beckman says. “We are seeing about a 10-percent increase in productivity, but the major benefit is our ability to get more accurate feed rates, which allow us to get the material savings we were after. Material costs represent the majority of cost of those brake components. And, since we’ve realized material savings of about 20 percent, we’ve been able to reduce some of our prices, to help us grow in a very competitive marketplace.” MF

Information for this article was provided, on behalf of GSW Press Automation, by Coe Press Equipment, Sterling Heights, MI; 586/979-4400, http://www.cpec.com/.

Industry-Related Terms: Die, Edge, Forming, Grinding, Pickled and Oiled, Scrap
View Glossary of Metalforming Terms

 

See also: Coe Press Equipment Corporation

Technologies: Coil and Sheet Handling, Materials

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