Page 16 - MetalForming Magazine March 2022

Robotic
Destacking and
Press Tending
a Huge Time and Labor Saver
...for Sukup Manufacturing, an Iowa-based agricultural supplier that adds automation to free shop- floor personnel for other duties.
BY LOUIS A. KREN, SENIOR EDITOR
Good, stable pricing of agricul- tural commodities such as grains over the past few years has meant steady demand for grain- storage and-handling systems and equipment. That’s good news for sup- pliers in this sector, including Sukup Manufacturing Co. However, rising steel prices and a dearth of skilled labor have proved challenging—a common refrain in the metal forming and fab- ricating world. Helping to meet such challenges, and specifically to fulfill increasing customer demand, have driven the company to increasingly explore and implement automation.
One of the latest automation additions at the Sheffield, IA-based manufacturer, to meet said demand: a Yaskawa Motoman robot that destacks blanks and tends two stamping presses to pro- duce flooring supports for use in grain- storage operations.
“Here’s a fun stat,” Steve Sukup, company president and chief executive officer, tells MetalForming: “Since we brought in our first robot in the 1990s, we've more than tripled our employ- ment. It’s not a case where robots take jobs away, they just allow people to better utilize their skills.”
From Iowa Farm Field to Two-Continent Operation
Employees at Sukup Manufacturing now number 750, across 1 million sq. ft. of operations space at locations in North America and Europe. That’s a far cry from 1961, when Eugene Sukup, Steve’s father, bought his first grain bin to dry and store shelled corn for his small farm. But heating the grain to dry it was hit and miss back then—a bottom-located heat source dried grain at the bottom but grain at the top would crust and spoil.
To help provide high-quantity production of an inhouse patented sheet metal floor- ing support, Sukup Manufacturing brought in a robot for automated press tending, replacing manual blank and part loading and unloading. The robot loads 20-gauge steel blanks into a press for forming (seen here), unloads the formed part, now a tube section, and transfers it to another press for bending.
“Dad always compared it to a kettle of beans on the stove...when you turn the heater up, the bottom would burn and the top would still be cold if you didn’t stir it,” Steve Sukup recalls. “So he developed an auger stirring machine that mixed the grain to dry it faster and more evenly.”
Building on this idea, Eugene mod- ified a stoker auger from a coal furnace, powered it with an electric drill and hung it from the top of the bin to loosen the hot spots and prevent spoilage. He continued tinkering, and hit on the idea of automating the setup by adding a horizontal auger through the handle of the drill to make it automatic. Eugene patented it as the Stirway stir- ring machine and, with his wife Mary, founded Sukup Manufacturing Co. in
14 MetalForming/March 2022
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