Page 35 - MetalForming March 2012
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TOOLROOM TECHNOLOGY
The Wiegel toolroom performs hard milling primarily for new dies—punch plates and strippers, for example. Inserts that might have once taken two or three days to premachine, heattreat and wire-EDM now are hard-milled, tapped and wire-cut in an hour or two.
milling. Before hard milling, the tool- room would machine die steels soft and send components out for heat- treat.
“Again, our biggest cost here is downtime in the pressroom,” Wiegel reiterates, noting that the toolroom doesn’t generate much profit, if any. But, its level of performance sure can make a difference in pressroom pro- ductivity and profitability. Inserts that might have once taken two or three days to pre-machine, heattreat and wire-EDM now are hard-milled, tapped and wire-cut in an hour or two.
The Wiegel toolroom performs hard milling primarily for new dies—punch plates and strippers, for example. Describing the benefits of hard milling, Wiess points to the process of counterboring for pilot holes as an example.
“Before, the dimensions of the coun- terbores in a block would vary depend- ing on how much the block bowed dur- ing heattreating,” says Wiess. “Then we’d put the pilots in and grind the heads, and have to mark the pilots so that they would go back in the same
counterbore. Now, with hard milling, the counterbores are identical, which allows us to place inserts in any posi- tion in the tool. Also, if we make any die changes—adding stripper inserts, for example—we can hard-mill that out, add a few tapped holes, make the sep- arate stripper insert and install it into the stripper.”
Adding a robot to its EDM depart- ment, to form a two-machine produc- tion cell, also fits the bill when it comes to on-demand replacement of tools for the Wiegel pressroom. “If we need to get an insert made ASAP for one of our presses that’s in production,” explains engineering manager Joe Manschula, “we can quickly fixture a block and immediately insert the job into the cell’s production schedule.”
The automated cell comprises two Mitsubishi EDM machines (an FA10P and FA20P) and a System 3R Work- Master robot.
Waterjet Cutting and Other Lead-Time Reducers
What’s coming down the pike for the Wiegel toolroom? Most likely, the
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