Page 16 - MetalForming November 2013

When Presses Show Their Age
...metal stampers can repair/rebuild, or replace with new. Depending on the customer base, type of work and quality requirements, a diligent diagnose-and-repair program may suffice. In other cases, the benefits of new press technology allows stampers to take on new, more tightly toleranced and complex stampings.
Numerous geriatric mechanical presses still pound away at metal stampers coast to coast, only requiring their owners to diligently inspect, diagnose and repair to keep them running like new, or close to it. As long as the customer requirements for part quality and complexity don’t change much, why buy new?
That’s been the recipe for success at Charles Richter Corp., Wallkill, NY. For more than 100 years, the metal stamper has served a variety of customers— most in the lighting industry—with deep-drawn and stamped parts using some 100 presses. Most are mechanical OBI models, with a handful of pneu- matic and transfer presses thrown into the mix. Their nameplates are those that stamping historians recall fondly— Bliss, Verson, Federal, Warco etc.
Company President David Richter can’t think of any reason to buy new, when his maintenance manager has troubleshooting and repair work well in hand. And if repairs get too intense he has a local, trusted source of repair and rebuild services in Field Service Mechanical Co. (FSM), Bohemia, NY.
At the opposite end of the spectrum
BY BRAD F. KUVIN, EDITOR
we find Choice Fabricators, Inc. (CFI), a second-genera- tion privately held metal- forming company in Rainbow City, AL, where owner and president David Chadwick is in the midst of an aggres- sive pressroom-overhaul program. His newly expand- ed 200,000-sq.-ft. pressroom (the overall plant encom- passes 335,000 sq. ft.) hous-
14 MetalForming/November 2013
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A Verson gap-frame press undergoes backshaft repair at Charles Richter Corp., courtesy of Field Service Mechanical Co.