Page 20 - MetalForming January 2011

A Modest Blanking Line
Stands Tall Among Giant Transfer Presses
A two-out continuous-run blank-stacking system allows this Honda supplier to eliminate work-in-process blank inventory. An added bonus: One of the system’s new belt conveyors
tilts up and out of the way
so the press can run
progressive dies.
BY BRAD F. KUVIN, EDITOR
While colossal transfer presses dominate the landscape inside the 136,000-sq.-ft. plant of automotive Tier One supplier New- man Technology Inc., it’s a modest 400- ton blanking press that keeps the press- room at the Mansfield, OH, facility hitting on all cylinders. When the plant souped-up the blanking press with a new two-out blank-stacking system a few years ago, it drove throughput to highway speeds. In addition, the new blanking system’s simplistic design slashed changeover time by better than 60 percent. As a result, the plant’s press- room now stores zero inhouse-pro- duced blanks as work in process.
Newman stamps and assembles exhaust systems and door frames, as well as door inners and window mold- ings. It asks its blanking presses (the
400-ton model and a smaller 200-ton blanker) to supply blanks used to stamp, among other parts, right- and left-hand inner and outer door-frame side panels. A rollformed and stretch- formed part welds to the panels to complete each frame. The firm out- sources large two-out blanks used to stamp one-piece door frames for cer- tain vehicle models, produced on a twin-press tandem line comprising two 2000-ton transfer presses with robotic blank feed and an inter-press transfer robot. (All of Newman’s presses are Aida models).
Newman Technology manufactures door frames from these stamped and roll- formed parts.
18 MetalForming/January 2011
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