Page 15 - MetalForming April 2009

vision of the State of Ohio and the City of Lima, and partnerships with local educational institutions such as Rhodes State College and The Ohio State Uni- versity, we’ve been able to marry aca- demics with manufacturing. We’re com- mitted to applying the grants that we receive, and focusing our own research and development investments in time and money, to advancing technology in a practical way, so that we create jobs. That’s our responsibility, and we intend to live up to it.”
A Transportation and Decorated-Products Hub
American Trim began as a tool and die company in 1951, then migrated into stamping for primarily the appli- ance industry. The family-owned com- pany now operates eight manufacturing plants in the United States and one in Mexico, with 60 percent of its business still rooted in appliance, the remainder in transportation—heavy truck, auto- motive, marine and all-terrain vehicles.
We recently visited the company’s largest facility, a 500,000-sq.-ft. plant in Sidney, OH, the firm’s hub for its trans- portation- and decorated-products business units. In one area of the plant,
a line-die operation stamps high-vol- ume appliance control panels. Roll- coating and screen-printing operations occupy a second portion of the plant, which also houses the firm’s new inte- grated e-coat and powder-coat line. A third area of the facility houses equip- ment and operations dedicated to trans- portation products—forming, welding and assembly of truck bumpers, auto- motive cross members, fuel-tank brack- ets, and other weldments and modular assemblies. Stamping-press capacity peaks at 1600 tons; a robotic-tended four-press tandem line stamps heavy- truck bumpers.
“Within the last five years, we’ve shift- ed considerably to providing more value- added content,” says Chris Highfield, the firm’s director of North American sales and new markets. “We’re working more to apply our extensive expertise in the heavy-truck market to the automotive market—heavy-gauge welding and assembly, for example. And we’re work- ing to help our customers consolidate parts through creative forming.”
In one case, Highfield says, stamping and assembling a large radiator sup- port, the firm developed an in-die tap- ping station to eliminate a weld nut
and also redesigned the assem- bly to eliminate an L-shaped bracket and a secondary welding operation, carv-
short-term low-volume polymeric tool- ing that allows it to build tools in a fraction of the time typically required. “We call these bridge tools, to help our customers introduce new products to the market very quickly,” says High- field, “often in less than a month. We can stamp as many as 30,000 pieces with the tools, and in some cases, on very light- gauge materials, we’ve realized 100,000 stampings. The concept spurs our abil- ity to be an agile manufacturer and offer one-piece flow.”
Polymeric tooling, according to American Trim officials, uses a mold of composite material. The tooling has proven ideal for making parts for lim- ited-production runs and to help cus- tomers quickly develop new, unique and market-specific trim components from material 0.080 in. and thinner. This allows American Trim’s OEM part- ners to move quickly from concept to customer while minimizing investment in new tooling. In one case, for an appli- ance-industry customer, the firm moved from design consulting to production kickoff in just 8 weeks, compared to a traditional timeframe of 26 weeks.
Another potential application for polymeric tooling: short-run limited production of automotive parts. This concept was exemplified by the highly publicized interior lauded on the Lin- coln MKS Moda concept vehicle. American Trim created a gold-pat- terned metallic instrument-panel accent trim for the vehicle, which Lin- coln introduced at the SEMA (Spe- cialty Equipment Market Association) show last November in Las Vegas. “For this project, we moved from design to prototype production and then to parts delivery for installation on the con- cept vehicle in just six weeks,” says Highfield. “And moving to full pro- duction with polymeric tooling would add only a few additional weeks—we could go from concept to customer feasibility in less than 20 weeks.”
One-of-a-Kind Integrated Coating Line
The real traffic-stopper at the Sidney plant, though, is the centrally located
ing 12 percent from the cost of every assembly.
Short-Run Low-Cost Tooling
Also for its
stamping
tomers, American
Trim has devel-
oped a concept for manufacturing
American Trim is working with The Ohio State University Department of
Materials Science and Engineering and General Motors to apply high- velocity metalforming (HVMF) for the low-cost manufacture of fuel-
cell plates (shown here) for use in hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles.
cus-
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