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What Good is a Good Stamping
As explained by Michael Grams, CFO of returnable-rack and dunnage manufacturer Advanta Industries, “the time crunch that affects nearly every automotive program hits us harder than any other supplier in the chain. As projects face delay after delay, by the time designs are finalized, for new automotive stampings for example, we might have just a few weeks to design and fabricate the returnable racks used to transport them. We’re the last step in the process, and we can’t work on the racks until the part designs are finalized and the suppliers figure out how they’re going to ship the parts.”
“Robotic unloading means we have to be more precise than ever with part location and orientation within the racks,” explains production manager Rusty Obermyer. “Our manufacturing tolerances have really been squeezed in the last few years. We’re frequently tasked with cutting parts and providing welded assemblies with ±0.005-in. dimensional tolerances.”
Better Fixtures Beget Better Racks
The better the weld fixture the better the rack, and we spied some amazingly designed and built weld fixtures when touring the 130,000-sq.-ft. Advanta shop. Precision-laser-cut parts fit together beautifully in the fixtures to help welders assemble the racks. It’s clear that their jobs are made that much easier—meaning faster and with less chance for error—when weld fixtures are built from precision-laser-cut components.
The workhorse cutting machines at Advanta: an Amada FOM2 machine with a 4000-W CO2 laser, added in 2012; and an Amada FOL3015AJ machine with a 4000-W fiber laser, brought into the shop in 2013 direct from the FABTECH floor in Las Vegas. Automated material-handling systems manage material flow for both machines—twin storage towers (Amada ALSUL models) rack raw material and completed work at the fiber laser, and a single ALSUL tower manages material for and from the CO2 machine.
Bringing Laser Cutting Inhouse
An added benefit of bringing laser cutting inhouse is the extra opportunity for engineers and designers to find creative ways to leverage the technology to improve the fabrication processes. Case in point: Using the lasers to cut tabs and slots into rack components to make assembly more efficient and error-proof—in many cases, significantly more efficient.
“We can cut different sizes of tabs and slots in parts so that there is only one way to assemble,” says Obermyer. “That allows our welders to focus on what they do best—weld—and worry less about assembly and fitup. The parts fit together snugly with minimum joint gaps.”
Unattended, Lights Out
Advanta runs both Amada machines unmanned for two shifts, and lights-out during a third shift. Longer-running jobs (often thicker plate) typically run lights-out. Each material-storage tower comprises nine shelves rated to 6600 lb. of material. The automated material-handling systems deliver nested blanks from the towers to the lasers, and return cut blanks back to the storage towers to be manually shaken apart later.
“Cutting 14-gauge steel using shop air on the fiber laser is amazingly fast,” says Obermyer, “up to 750 in./min. That’s four times faster than with the CO2 machine.”
Obermyer has learned a lot in a short time when it comes to optimizing laser-cutting parameters to achieve certain quality and productivity goals. For example, he describes a recent job cutting trailer-hitch side plates from thick steel, originally specified as 3⁄8 in. but that ultimately wound up being cut from 0.390 in. work (or 0.015 in. thinner).
“You wouldn’t think that the 0.015 in. would make a difference in the laser-cutting process,” he says, “but it definitely did. While we were able to cut the slightly thinner material a little faster, when we increased gas pressure the cut edge started to get choppy. So we actually reduced gas pressure a bit and increased the pulse rate of the laser, which made for a beautifully smooth cut edge.” MF
See also: Amada North America, Inc
Related Enterprise Zones: Fabrication
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