New Press Lines Empowering Growth

November 28, 2023

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Founded in 1988 as Miro Tool & Mfg., at the time the firm focused on the “tool” part of its name, building dies, jigs and fixtures. Now known as Miro Mfg., the Waukesha, WI, firm has evolved into a full-service contract manufacturer with a focus on custom, precision stamping, as well as metal fabrication and machining. It hosts stamping presses to 1000-ton capacity with bed size to 60 by 144 in., and coil-feed lines able to deliver sheet to 48 in. wide.

Key to its most recent growth spurt is a 330-ton Komatsu servo press with 36-in. feed line, explains Miro sales manager Brent Cannavo. “That press, added in 2017, has been a workhorse,” he says, the centerpiece of the company’s 25,000-sq.-ft. stamping building, following a recent 15,000-sq.-ft. expansion. The campus also houses facilities dedicated to machining, wire EDM, and tool design and build. Another small building houses waterjet cutting machines, and a second nearby 80,000-sq.-ft. Miro campus houses fabrication operations, including CO₂ and fiber laser cutting machines, press brakes, welding cells, and a full assembly area.

“We serve a variety of industries, including providing high-volume parts to customers in the power-distribution industry,” Cannavo says. He notes that stamping for that industry also has helped to fuel growth in its metal fabrication business, as plenty of assemblies require stamping, fabricating and welding operations.

“We strive to be a turnkey supplier,” he adds.

New Press Line Will Relieve a Bottleneck

Since adding the servo press, it’s been a “highly versatile speed demon,” per Cannavo, running primarily in pendulum mode and bringing a new level of productivity to Miro’s stamping operations. By mid-2021, growth in orders started to create a bottleneck, Cannavo says, for producing assemblies needing relatively small to midsized parts stamped on the 330-ton press.

“Our 1000-ton press also was seeing significant demand, running a number of parts falling into the sweet spot between tonnages and bed sizes available with our 400- and 600-ton presses,” Cannavo adds. As a result, the management team began to consider adding yet another press to the stable.

“We needed plan out the next logical addition to our pressroom, to make some breathing room,” Cannavo recalls, “and sought a fast-acting press to fit between the new servo press and our 1000-ton press. We needed a machine able to run midsized to larger parts quickly and at high volume, helping to level out the workload. We found ourselves stamping parts that might have required only 500 to 600 tons of force on the big press and wanted to open capacity on that press for higher-tonnage parts. So, we went shopping for a fast, high-tonnage press to fit between the 330- and 1000-ton workhorse presses.”

The result of the search: a 660-ton mechanical press, a Komatsu E2G600 two-point straightside model with a 61 by 168-in. bolster, 36.2-in. shut height and 19.7-in. stroke, capable of cycling at up to 40 strokes/min. It’s equipped with a Formtek coil line delivering 48-in. coil-width capacity and rated for 45,000-psi mild steel to 0.187 in. thick (0.312 in. material thickness at 10 in. wide). Maximum coil OD: 60 in.

“We have a history with Formtek,” Cannavo says, “and try to standardize on suppliers where we can. With this line, like our others, we put a lot of thought and time into developing the specs we’re looking for. This time we looked closely at maximum coil weight and wanted to be able to run 20,000-lb. coils to allow longer runs between coil changes. That makes us more efficient in how we bring in and store our materials. And, we went with a line capable of feeding coil to 48 in. wide to help us improve efficiency and provide more flexibility with the tools we can run.”

Coil-Line Specs

Other key coil-line specs: 50 ft./min. maximum line speed; Formtek’s ServoMax extra-high-capacity electronic roll feed, with two 6-in.-dia. feed rolls, pneumatic feed-roll lift and end-of-stock detector; 500-job memory; single-stroke and feed-and-fire operational modes; double-sided pneumatic threading table; powered stock straightener with five straightening rolls, two powered exit pinch rolls and four powered entry coil-breaker rolls; and a consolidated control package for managing the straightener, threading tables and stock reel.

CWP’s consolidated control package features a full-color touchscreen HMI, diagnostic display screens, on-screen step-by-step thread-up instructions, on-screen lubrication schedule, on-screen parts diagrams and an “auto-ready” feature for thread-up, along with digital roll-position readout for the straightener head. The line also features a fully hydraulic holddown peeler system, stock reel with spring-applied air-release drag brake and coil-loading car with hydraulic overload protection.

Expected to be up and running in December 2023, the new press line immediately will take over a handful jobs currently running in other work centers, in addition to new work specifically targeted for that press. These jobs, and other new customers, Cannavo adds, have been “tightening their standards when it comes to quality requirements, and we’ve also been investing in our quality department to meet their needs.”

Those investments in the quality department include an Excel Micro-Vu automated, camera-based gantry-style measuring system that employs programmable optical and digital zoom functions (12:1 zoom lens capable of 926X magnification) to enable its high-resolution digital camera to capture intricate geometry on parts ranging to 2.5 m long. The most recently added piece of equipment to join the quality lab: a second portable CMM capable of laser-scanning parts to 14 ft. long.

“We added that second portable CMM in July 2023 (joining a smaller unit with 9-ft. working volume) to take on longer parts,” says Cannavo. “It’s much more efficient and easier to use when scanning some of our longer parts than when using the smaller arm.” MF