Page 37 - MetalForming Magazine February 2023 - Metal Forming for the Automotive Industry

BLANKING LINE Supports Automotive’s Southeastern-U.S. Progression
For its newest blanking line, Olympic Steel turned to Stamtec to provide this 660-U.S.-ton eccentric-geared mechanical press—12-in. stroke, 180 by 102-in. 40-ton-capacity rolling bolster. At its front end sits a Coe 72-in. coil-processing line.
over from the Verson to gain efficiencies on these parts as well.”
Automated Stacking
Handling the blanks coming off the new press falls to an automated stack- ing system developed by AP&T, designed to manage blanks as large as 70-in. square from material 0.02 to 0.125 in. thick and with maximum blank weight of 33 lb. As blanks exit the press onto a belt conveyor, they are picked up by an overhead magnetic conveyor and moved to prepro- grammed locations, then dropped into a set of moveable arms equipped with crowding cones to form nice, neat stacks.
“Depending on the size and weight of the blanks, we can stack as many as two stacks at a time on the same hydraulic lift table,” shares process engineer Ryan Hall. “The system con- trol switches the magnet off at the pro- grammed location to drop the blanks in between a set of crowding cones that then move in to gently tamp the stack after each part drops.” Maximum stack weight and height: 8000 lb., 24 in.
Remote maintenance on the drop- stacking line is enabled via a third- party device called Ewon, supplied by HMS Networks, an independent man- ufacturer of industrial-communication products, with remote maintenance being a key application. “That setup allowed our maintenance team, during line startup, to quickly get up to speed on troubleshooting the equipment,” Whidby says. “It played a vital role.
“The key to the success of a project of this size and with so many moving parts is the ability to rely on the wisdom and input of the team you put togeth- er,” Whidby continues. “We had a great team of people here in Georgia, as well as the current vice president of opera- tions, Terry Rohde, and past executive, Ray Walker.”
Whidby also credits the help of the team at equipment distributor Vision- ary Manufacturing Solutions, Rochester, MI., “who reached out to us when it heard that we were in the market for a blanking line,” he says. “It has become one of our go-to resources on this project, as well as others.”
Safety First
As Olympic Steel touts safety as a core value, Whidby stresses that the new blanking line was designed with that in mind. “Increased safety of our operators and packers drove many of the decisions we made,” Whidby says. “Adding the automated stacker is a great example, because our packers do not have to manually handle parts as they exit the press. This one change eliminated the risk of hand injuries at this stage in production.”
The entire line also is equipped with more than a dozen E-stops, so no one is more than an arm’s reach away from stopping the machine in case of an emergency, Whidby explains. In addi- tion to the E-stops, the line has numer- ous interlocks to keep the equipment from operating when someone is in
harm’s way, including five interlocked gates on the perimeter fencing to the automation and feed line; two die blocks to protect the operators when they need go inside of the press; and lockout/tagout points on every elec- trical cabinet and breaker box.
In addition to ensuring efficient blank handling, which without the automation could have proven chal- lenging at the press, scrap handling also has been a focus, “and we continue to work on that,” Hall says. As an exam- ple, he points to a die that previously ran on the Verson, which generated 230 lb. of scrap/min. “But when that die runs on the Stamtec at nearly dou- ble that speed,” says Hall, “scrap gen- eration exceeds 400 lb./min.—that’s a lot of scrap!”
Hall and Whidby continue to look for a better way to manage the high amount of scrap coming from the Stamtec line, originally equipped with a pair of eccentric-gear-drive scrap shakers dumping directly into a set of hoppers. “Recently,” Hall explains, “we replaced those shakers with steel- belt conveyors and rack-and-pinion- drive scrap shakers that can better handle the scrap weight. Longer term, we’re looking at using trailers and hydraulically controlled ‘drop-bottom’ hoppers, managed with an overhead crane to empty the hoppers into a trailer. We’re also evaluating installing a permanent scrap conveyor straight from the press that would exit to the side of the building and dump directly into trailers.”
34 MetalForming/February 2023
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