Motors & Drives Information

Rob Grant, president of Pressway, Inc. (Roseville, Michigan), a stamping supplier, was looking to sharpen the company's competitive edge. He was looking for greater part quality and the ability to hold tighter tolerances, increased uptime with shorter setups and changeovers, longer die and tool life, more efficient diagnostics to reduce downtime, improved customer service, an expansion of part runability and more.

"Today's manufacturer not only has to be able to produce good parts efficiently," says Mr. Grant, "they have to also be able to handle data and use information about their products and processes effectively." To accomplish all this, the company decided to make major investments in new presses, coil handling, feed lines and scrap removal, plus network communications.

A critical element to Pressway's additional capacities and capabilities is a full line of press feed and coil handling equipment provided by Dallas Industries, Inc. (Troy, Michigan). Of the ten press lines at the facility, all are outfitted with Dallas' precision servofeeds, along with threading tables, power straighteners, peeler/threader/debender units and coil reels. And eight of those lines are also equipped with Pressmaster servofeed controllers from Dallas, control devices that assure synchronous speeds of stock feed and press operation regardless of any fluctuations that may occur. The Pressmaster units, linked with the press controls and networked to management information systems, provide a continuous flow of operational data that can be accessed and used by management, setup personnel and line operators.

For Mr. Grant, information handling, along with the enhanced quality output and improved productivity, is what Pressway needed to surpass its competition. The 30-year-old company had a lot of old and add-on equipment. To keep its business, it needed the technologically advanced equipment. Dallas lines met those specifications.

A few of the examples that Mr. Grant highlights from this equipment are the coil reels that have a 72-inch coil OD capacity and 20,000-lb capacities that provide for longer run times and reduced downtime for coil replacement. Also, on many of the lines, a coil car is included that allows the next coil of material to be prestaged and prepped for quick loading on to the reel when the currently running coil is depleted. In addition, the lines are equipped with threading tables that help align stock edges more accurately, resulting in faster changeovers and quicker setups.

Mr. Grant also cites the safety factor of the new lines and, specifically the single unit threader/debender/coil restrictor mechanism. The adjustable height threading table provides easy, accurate guidance into the feed, allowing the stock feed and its path to be kept aligned and under control, and coil stock is prevented from unwinding prematurely.

Another critical area to Pressway is quality. The precision of the new CNC servofeeds provides feed increments of 0.001 inch and repeatability to the same 0.001-inch tolerance, meaning material is consistently positioned correctly in the dies. Not only are the stampings produced more accurately, but the precision also lessens the risk of mis-hits and helps lengthen the life of tools, punches and dies.

Also contributing to quality improvements at Pressway are the power straighteners. The electronically controlled units can be adjusted to provide stock that is flat to approximately ±0.001 inch, depending on the material. "The straighter the material going in, the flatter the part coming out," says Mr. Grant.

At Pressway, according to Mr. Grant, the key element of the new press lines is the control offered. Most of the presses at the facility are CNC controlled and equipped with electronic sensor systems for monitoring operations, which in turn are linked to the lines corresponding to the feed system's Pressmaster controller. Changeovers and setups are now accomplished by merely entering data at the press control, either through an onboard stored part number program or by downloading from the external PC source located in the Pressway offices. The program contains operational parameters such as cycle times, feed lengths and so on. While the press is reset, the controller also relays the necessary program commands to the feed system control to automatically make adjustments such as roller speed, and it also synchronizes the feed cycle to achieve the infeed length. Other than the manual, mechanical operations of changing the dies (which Pressway has upgraded with several devices to make this as easy, accurate and fast as possible) and loading new stock if required, the setup is complete.

Things have definitely improved for the company. "We've recently moved into a new facility, more than doubling our size. The new presses, the larger capacity reels, the accuracy and reliability of the feeds, the straighter stock, and the efficient scrap handling have helped increase our productivity providing 10 percent to 20 percent faster run times," says Mr. Grant. "Also, an important factor is the data and information handling—we can make intelligent decisions regarding scheduling, maintenance requirements, continuous quality improvements and customer relations."

# posted by Medical Information : 9:31 PM