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Balancing Long-Term Investements
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Manor Management (l to r): Kevin Segebarth, Chief Eningeer; Tom Simeone, President; Ken Galeno, Vice President |
Manor has found that the key to their success in operating a stamping business is not just investment into technology, but fiscally and technology wise investments in technology. This means adding newer technology/equipment when needed, but also continuing to make existing workhorses deliver the throughput and quality required.
Tom Simeone, Manor President states, “We take care of our equipment and I think if you look at our shop from where we were 10 years ago, we’ve come miles. However, we have to keep the philosophy that we always have to keep upgrading. Sure, I would like a shop full of newer equipment, but you have the realities of what makes sense for today’s volumes and capital budget availability. We are fairly conservative in how we make technology investments. If we take a chance on a customer, we tend to take it conservatively. If we take a chance on a piece of equipment, we’ll do the same thing and the used market has been very good to us. We found that certain presses built in certain years ended up running better than any of the presses that are out there today. So we target finding those types of used presses and then we employ the best machinery rebuilders to work on specific areas that we think are critical to our operation. We could have put this money into a new press, but we don’t because we are impressed with the “purchase price/performance realized” ratio of a lot of the older “iron” out there and felt that the biggest gain in efficiency is found in feed equipment. So that’s where we’ve targeted with our investments. Our newer feed equipment make those presses, as long as they’re maintained properly, run beautifully.
Feed It Better…With Limited Line Length To Work With
Specifically, Manor management had a several fold challenge in their larger press room area:
- After running a used servo feed system on one of their most productive press lines (a 200-ton Bliss), they realized that a different feed line would be required. They found that there were too many limitations during set-ups that required a lot of adjustments, faults with the programming system, and the requirements of time-consuming shimming openings when running thicker stock.
- This same press line had line length limitations…and a conventional feed line wasn’t going to fit in their tight plant layout.
- Plus, they needed to investigate a better press feeding answer to replace their air feed system on their most recent press 400 ton press purchase.
The Coe SpaceMaster Compact Coil Line (Series 3) used at Manor Tool and Manufacturing. |
The Coe SpaceMaster Compact Coil Line (Series 3) used at Manor Tool and Manufacturing…close up of the coil reel section of the machine. |
Their answer was a SpaceMaster Compact Coil Line from Coe Press Equipment. This system combines the processing of unwinding, straightening and feeding of coil stock in a single machine with a smaller space footprint (17’) when compared to traditional coil feed lines. It will process .125” x 24” wide materials at 60,000 PSI yield strength (up to .250” materials can also be processed, material width and type dependent). It provides fast production speeds up to 60 FPM (up to 70 SPM performance at 6” feed lengths). True pilot release functionality, closed-loop digital servo drive and ServoMaster MMI control round out the products key features. Other pertinent information on the SpaceMaster Series III include:
- 11,000 lb. maximum coil weight, 64” maximum coil O.D.,
- The 3.5” straightener rolls are configured in a 4 over 4 arrangement with center back-ups to minimize roll deflection and located on close centers for more effective straightening,
- precision cluster gear drivetrain provides effective torque delivery to all rolls and accurate feeding results,
- a heavy-duty hold down arm with a motorized endwheel contains the coil from clockspringing and is synchronized with the motorized reel during payoff operations to maintain a tightly wrapped coil,
- handsfree threading is accomplished through the use of the lower hold-up table, threading assist roll, and debender mechanism,
- and efficient coil staging and loading is performed with the hydraulic traveling coil car.
Kevin Segebarth, Manor Chief Engineer sees “a night and day difference” in operating the newer feed system…and for many reasons. “It’s definitely a lot safer,” he says. “We don’t need two men to do a coil thread and we don’t have to handle the material anymore. We were running the thicker and wider materials and when you cut those bands you get the clock spring. Plus, we only have about 21’ for a feed line. It would have taken 26’ to 30’ to put in a traditional feed line. Now we’re right about 17’. This gives us better access to our die storage area now because we can operate a forklift easily to access our storage racks along the back wall, as well as bringing coil materials to each of the press lines there. Our local rep, Stamping Systems (Rolling Meadows, IL), helped to show us the limited space solution from Coe would work well in our facility.”
Coils are loaded via forklift on the Coe SpaceMaster Compact Coil Line (Series 3) used at Manor Tool and Manufacturing. |
They also appreciate the increased efficiencies that the SpaceMaster has brought to this press cell. “When we run heavier thicknesses and/or when stamp longer parts, we find we’re loading new coil every hour,” Simeone adds. “Those coil changes used to take somewhere between 15 and 25 minutes with the old system. We now target coil reloads down to five minutes. It’s even more impressive when we’re loading heavier coil stock because before we didn’t have threading tables, so we would have two guys threading this big coil. It was really a nightmare as far as efficiency is concerned. And because we have more work for our 200-ton than we do most of our presses, it’s even more important to keep the productivity maximized. As soon as we get a larger volume of work for our 400-ton press, we will mirror this feed technology with the same investment.”
Some jobs require running thicker and/or stronger materials, thus dictating an upgrade in feed system capacity. Simeone adds, “We could have made the decision to go with Coe’s mid-range size model, but the reason we went with the bigger one (Series 3 SpaceMaster) is we have found that it matches up better with the heavier thicknesses we run. With a lot of other stampers, .048” is often the thickest materials they process. But when you’re running .125” annealed spring steel that’s 12” wide, you want to have the equipment to get the job done.”
“Another big thing we were looking at is how it would mark the coils,” Simeone says. “We took a look at several of these automatic feeders where the straighteners have pilot release with a pivot top design, but we liked the idea that Coe had an even release with their straightener rolls. We actually tested .040” aluminum to see how much it would mark the coil and we saw very little marking. On one of our cosmetically-sensitive brass part jobs, if the customer sees any ding or scratch, they’ll ship the whole product back. We find that more and more of our work tends to be a visibly seen part, so we find that appearance is critical…and that’s another reason why we chose the Coe line.”
Simeone adds this on the SpaceMaster’s pilot release function: “We run a lot of heavier-thickness, high accuracy type parts. And if you don’t release the material to let the pilots do their job, you’re going to either wear out your pilot holes…or you’re going to have problems with die operation or excessive wear and tear on the tooling…or you’re going to eventually lose accuracy in the die. When we have a +/-.002” tolerance on a .125” thick metal stamping and hole-to-hole is 3-1/2” apart, you’ve got to maintain a specific accuracy. And the SpaceMaster gives us that accuracy.”
On Their Larger Press Challenges
In the same area of the press room, Manor operates a newly-purchased used 400-ton Bliss Draw-Link press with a 96” X 48” bed size. They like this design not just for the draw work abilities, but they also say the smother link action tends to reduce challenges with die design and repair due to its slower speed through the bottom of the stroke.
Segebarth adds, “One of the neat things about the press is the fact that the original owners bought it for draw work, but they also had the frame reinforced for heavy stamping. This will help us with our job versatility.”
The Coe SpaceMaster Compact Coil Line (Series 3) used at Manor Tool and Manufacturing…close up of the ServoMaster Control unit of the machine. |
Currently, the press operates with an older air feed system, but Manor is looking to upgrade to servo technologies because of current inefficiencies with job setup times and material loss in setup, but their biggest challenge is reducing excessive coil changeover times.
“We run some pretty long length jobs on both the 200 and 400 ton lines,” states Simeone. “And that means that we’re feeding new coil once an hour at times. With a hands-free servo feed line, all of a sudden you can double your throughput. And again, that’s why we put it on the 200-ton line, because we wanted to realize these types of savings. And we’re hoping that eventually the 400-ton will be the same way, because that will become our maximum tonnage press. We guestimate that this will lead to a 30-35% productivity gain. Again, these aren’t things that the customer would notice (the difference between the Coe line and the air-feed line), because the end product would be the same to them. We would take the extra care that’s necessary to produce the part on either line. However, it’s an efficiency savings internally. And simply put, it’s how you make money and remain competitive in the marketplace.”
On Using Sensors And Vision Systems…
A Manor employee uses a special sensor fixture to check the critical tolerance of a stamped part.
Kevin Segebarth, Manor Chief Engineer, demonstrates a vision system that automatically checks more than 150 reference points with each scan. |
Simeone states, “We run anywhere from 125 part lots all the way up to 150,000 piece runs. Million-piece jobs are not our forte. As our lot sizes increase, we see the need to do more and more with sensors. We’ve been finding more and more, in order to reduce cost to the customer, in order to get more efficiency, we need to take care of their tool and sensors are helping us to do so. We try to apply sensors wherever we can within the tool. For example, we tap some .125” annealed spring steel with a 6-32 tap and we want to make sure that tap doesn’t break and go through the die, so we put sensors to sense any tap breakage. We have applications where we sense part location in the die when it’s hand-fed into the tool to help us improve production and quality rates.
Manor also performs a vision inspection of piece parts on specific jobs that require inspection in three different locations with more than 150 attributes per photo. It’s a white-on-black application. White on black with a screen of white paint…and there are over 150 things that an operator would have to check. So, in order to bring the customer repeatability, accuracy and quantified analysis to the inspection process, Manor has introduced a vision system to the process.
On The Importance Of Tools In-House Toolmaking And Repair
Depending on size of volumes or application specific requirements, Manor can build the die and run stamping jobs requiring in-die countersinking or tapping. But it must make financial sense to do these operations in the die…and Manor can help you figure that out, as well.
Die design, manufacturing and repair capabilities are critical to the success at Manor Tool and Manufacturing |
Tom says, “If you’re stamping a million parts annually, you can spend the money up front to incorporate the secondary operations into the tool. But when you’re dealing with 10,000 to 50,000 parts a year, the thought of spending additional money on a tool that requires countersinking doesn’t really make sense. On one specific job, we’re countersinking eight holes at one time. We have tapped parts in which we’ve tapped two different pitches for 20 holes at once. These are the kind of things that we can offer on a very quick turn-around basis …and it’s right next door to the stamping room. When needed, we’re able to move it right from the press into the machining department all under one roof.”
Manor delivers full service (“cradle to grave…prototype to production”) and provides many outside services that a lot of shops their size don’t. These include heat treating, deburring, plating, and anodizing, just to name a few.
All of the tooling design is done internally using tools such as Unigraphics NX5 Progressive Die Wizard and Mastercam CAD-CAM software. Simeone adds, “Most stampers don’t have in-house die building or do in-house design, but we believe that is fundamental to taking care of our customer’s tool. Die-building has changed quite a bit recently, because it’s more of an assembly process now. However, we still feel that some of that has to be held on to in order to maintain a good apprenticeship program and to ensure good maintenance of our customer tools. Sometimes we get tools in from our customers that are just destroyed and we end up rebuilding them slowly, depending on budgets and production demands. We have that ability to reverse engineer, 3D machine, and digitize tooling in our CMM.”
And their involvement in DFM (Design for Manufacturability) techniques is appreciated by their customer base. “I think that if you have any good customer relationship today, you’re going to be involved right up front in the design of the component that you’re making,” Simeone states. “You want to design that component so that you get longer life out of the tool and lower total cost to the customer. If you’re looking strictly at the bottom line, you may end up going somewhere else. However, I think if you look at long-term cost, it’s cheaper to do business with Manor because you’ll end up buying that tool once rather than buying it twice. We often hear that a competitor has a problem with delivery and/or they aren’t doing a good job. Often the problem is that because the tool falls into ill-maintenance, the tool doesn’t run as well. For us, the way we make money is to make sure that tool runs as clean as possible. And it often starts with the initial print review. But after that, once the work is received, we go through a secondary review where we have 3 or 4 different engineers look at it and we might come up with additional ideas. We also have a very stringent process where we go through and analyze every die from production, quality, tool room, engineering…you know that when you build a tool here, you’re getting a multi-faceted look. The goal is that we want our efficiency right out of the box, and we want that efficiency as fast as we can get it so that you don’t have headaches in the end or any part in the process.”
Manor’s Kevin Segebarth and Tom Simeone with Coe Press Equipment’s Regional Sales Manager John Wyss. |
Segebarth adds, “One of the other advantages we see of being able to design and build in-house is we actually take a look at the part and we make recommendations to the customer to help improve their tooling. Instead of sharp corners, we might want to add a radius, and if that’s okay with the customer, that aids in the tool consistently running. We’ve actually redesigned parts for customers and saved them a tremendous amount of money. We do have a customer where we’ve taken a machined part and actually made it into a rolled stamping for them and saved them a tremendous amount of money.”
Depending on capacity issues and lead time, Manor has built, designed and produced 10,000 parts from progressive tooling in seven weeks.
More Information On The Companies
Coe Press Equipment Corporation, with headquarters in Sterling Heights, Michigan, is a leading producer of pressroom feed equipment including servo roll feeds, power straighteners, coil reels, and complete coil feed systems. They design and build fully-integrated coil processing systems, blanking and cut-to-length lines, and space-saving compact coil lines for metal stamping and processing operations. For more information, contact Jim Ward at Coe Press Equipment Corporation, 40549 Brentwood, Sterling Heights, MI 48310, (586) 979-4400, fax (586) 979-2970, email: info@cpec.com, website: www.cpec.com.
The Coe sales representative for the installation is Stamping Systems, 1833 D Hicks Road, Rolling Meadows, IL 60008. Phone: 847-934-5528, Fax: 847-934-0128. Email: ssinc20@sbcglobal.net.
For more information on Manor Tool & Manufacturing, contact Tom Simeone at 9200 Ivanhoe Street. Schiller Park, IL 60176. Phone: 847-678-2020. Email: manor@manortool.com. Web: www.manortool.com.
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