Page 39 - MetalForming May 2013

To fulfill the firm’s initial order for 10,000 displays, Midland Metal’s new threadform tool completed more than 240,000 cycles, each cycle requiring 24 thread helixes.
To blast its welding bottleneck, Mid- land Metal Products sought a way to bypass the welding operation alto- gether and look for a solution using its turret-punching operations. To the front stepped Mate sales engineer Chris Scherer, who recommended develop- ing a prototype and finished panels using Mate’s threadform tool.
While threadforming on a turret press has been around for years, Mid- land’s new tool takes a different approach to forming compared to con- ventional threadform tools. Mate’s design thins the sheetmetal in the cen- ter of the form and, in a single press operation, creates a threadform helix. A customized insert in the tool pre- cisely matches the thread helix of the screw thread used for fastening. To fit Midland’s dimensional requirements for the display, a Mate applications specialist used CAD software to elec- tronically model the geometry of the insert. He created a 3D solid model for the required 10-24 and 1⁄4-20 thread
manufactures award-winning displays for a wide range of global-branded products, including clothing, toys, building supplies and snack foods. When challenged to fabricate an in- store display to introduce a new line of cell phones for a major discount retail- er, Midland looked to develop a new method for fastening components to the shelves. The new process proved so effective that the company plans to use it wherever possible on future dis- play designs.
Blasting its Welding Bottleneck
“When planning prototype samples for the recent order of cell-phone dis- plays, we analyzed the fabricating steps on the turret press,” reports operations manager B. J. McDonald. The panels are punched from 4- by 8-ft 20-gauge cold-rolled steel. To minimize setups, secondary operations and part moves, Midland consolidated as many of the punching operations upfront on the tur- ret press. Those operations include sizing the panels and punching rounded cor- ners, slots, notches and other features.
“The operations are done very quickly on our turret presses using multi-tools in the turrets,” adds McDonald. “Following punching, we typically used to weld or press-fit threaded nuts into the panels before
powder-coating them. These process steps worked well enough on shorter display runs, but welding operations created a bottleneck on larger orders of 10,000 displays or more.”
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