Page 32 - MetalForming-Dec-2018-issue

Fabrication: Bending
Speed Drives Innovation
“The RAS equipment is super-fast and super-efficient,” continues Dunn. That’s the good news, but it brought a challenge. Conventional means for offloading the large formed parts couldn’t keep pace with the RAS equip- ment. While MRI bought the RAS with dual-gantry auto-load technology, capable of loading two 36-in. stacks, or 600 sheets, the company’s parts are so large that the system had to stop every couple of minutes for offloading.
That didn’t last long, says Dunn, as MRI soon added a six-axis robotic unloader and skeletized the parts— bending four parts on a skeleton. A fiber laser perforates those parts so that once bent, the operators, and now the robot, snap out the bended parts, with the robotic unloader providing for fast offload.
“With the skeletized parts and the RAS bender and robotic unloader, we’re producing and unloading parts faster than ever,” says Dunn. “Our system
Whether outfitted with roller or brush tables, the bending system creates precise bends without sacrificing surface quality due its folding style. Rather than wiping against material, adjustments are made for the necessary material radius on multiple axes as the folding beam actuates.
can run from 10 min. to a couple of hours before operators need to step in to remove the full pallets.”
MRI’s bending improvements have resulted in labor savings, increased capacity and accuracy. Moreover, says
Dunn, “because the corner fitup is the best our welders have seen, weld time is down and quality is up, while in product assembly everything fits, elim- inating the need for filing, drilling or forcing parts together.” MF
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30 MetalForming/December 2018
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