Page 21 - MetalForming November 2022

NO CHOICE BUT TO
Contract metal stamper and fabricator Tenere, a Cadrex company, is installing (at press time) this automated three-press tandem line to run what traditionally would have been hand-transfer production. The line features three Aida straightside presses, and an AP&T blank-destacking system and its Speed Feeder press automation used to transfer parts from press to press. Tenere can run one or multiple tools per press, and has the option to run all three presses with automation together, or run just one or two of the presses along with the automation, leaving the remaining press(es) available for hand-transfer work. Photo courtesy of AP&T.
Automation has become the only option for stampers in a growing number of cases. The value of the parts a company can stamp, assemble and ship by adding automation to a line often and easily will exceed the automation investment. Factory output increases without adding people.
BY BRAD F. KUVIN, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Let’s roll the clock back to a time when high-volume metal form- ers drove the implementation of pressroom automation, rushing to replace hand-transfer operations with coil-fed progressive dies and transfer dies with mechanical transfers. Often, however, stampers running lower pro- duction volumes could not justify the investment in automated lines, and so they leveraged manual labor to move parts along line dies or from press to press.
Now, however, as we all know too well, with fewer people in the work- place it’s becoming more urgent to automate lower-volume production. Fortunately, where in the past the math didn’t work, modern automation has become less costly and more flexible, and easier to justify for lower-volume jobs. So says Todd Wenzel, owner/pres- ident of TCR Integrated Stamping Sys-
tems, Wisconsin Rapids, WI, a turnkey provider and systems integrator— whether a metal former needs to improve existing equipment or requires an entirely new production system.
“We have clients today that are so short-staffed that they have machines idle simply because they lack the people to run them,” says Wenzel. “Automation is the only option in a growing number of cases, even for jobs where automa- tion clearly was not affordable or cost- justifiable in the past. Now, there’s no option; the value of the parts that you can stamp, assemble and ship by adding automation to a line often and easily will exceed the automation investment. Your factory output goes up without adding people.”
In the end, production continues thanks to the automation—whether it be hand-fed parts being converted to a progressive die, or transfer tooling
18 MetalForming/November 2022
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