Flexible Fabrication System for Imperial Brown

Formtek-Maine has installed a new flexible fabrication system at the Imperial Brown facility in Tuscon, AZ.  The line, designed to process metal formed parts for walk-in coolers and freezers, can handle 10,000-lb. coils of cold-rolled steel, bottom-side surface-critical to 48 in. wide and ranging in thickness from 0.012 to 0.060 in. Included: a 10,000-lb. motorized stock reel and combination upender/coil car to load eye-to-the sky coils and reposition them to load onto the mandrel of the uncoiler.

A vinyl applicator mounted to the entry side of the cut-to-length (CTL) unit applies vinyl to the bottom surface of the material before it is run through the straightener and edge trimmers. The four-roll straightener removes coilset from the strip and has individually adjusted upper straightener rolls. The unit includes two edge-trimmer blades that can be manually adjusted on the arbor to the desired distance. An edge-trim rewinder on the back side of the collects and removes the edge-trim scrap.

A beading roll embosses ridges into the sheet after straightening for rigidity of the finished product. A dual-head notcher includes two manually adjusted C-frame heads, each with a turret die to add a notch to each edge of the material. The notch is used to remove enough material to allow folding or forming of the part without the material buckling.

Roll forming creates the part’s side flanges, bending each side of the strip upward in a 90-deg. bend. Roll former tooling is manually adjusted via a hand crank and ballscrew assembly, designed to process material widths from 12 to 50 in. A hydraulic cutoff shear is positioned at the exit of the roll former.