To turn material into value added product and with maximum flexibility, Bisley Office Furniture has invested in Pivatic coil processing equipment and a Finn-Power Pivatic P40 turret punch press.

With annual turnover of GBP72 million, Bisley Office Furniture is Europe's largest producer and supplier of steel office equipment. Its factories at Woking, Surrey and Newport, Gwent are the UK's largest users of sheet steel outside the car industry with combined monthly consumption of 3,500 tons - all mild steel in thicknesses from 0.7mm to 1.2mm. To assist in turning the material into value added product efficiently and with maximum flexibility, the company has invested recently in Pivatic coil processing equipment and a modern Finn-Power turret punch press, all built in Finland and supplied through sole UK agent, Press and Shear Machinery, Tamworth.

Bisley has recorded 20 per cent year on year growth for some time and is now the market leader in the UK, which absorbs 70 per cent of production.

This position has been achieved through a combination of effective marketing and cost-effective production.

While the basic cuboid shape of filing cabinets, cupboards and filing units is well established, the way in which the components are produced and the manner of their assembly is subject to continuous review and improvement.

This is supported by ongoing investment in modern sheet metal processing equipment.

The Newport factory in particular is a Mecca for sheet metal processing practice with capability to service batch processing requirements from one- to 20,000-off.

Newport engineering manager Paul Ostrolenk explains, 'We complete over 10,000 finished cabinets per week and process all of the sheet metal in-house.

Everything we manufacture is made to order - we supply both own-branded and customer-branded products.

Although they are nominally standard and break down into eight main product lines, there is huge potential for variation in height and width as a result of which we have 5,000 live components.

Hence we need considerable flexibility in our manufacturing resources to achieve rapid order turnround.' To that end the factory boasts a wide variety of manufacturing equipment.

It ranges from stand-alone machines to automated lines capable of taking in sheet material at one end and ejecting assembled cabinet outer casings in a range of sizes and varieties.

Likewise a recently installed, computer controlled, powder paint line can switch between different colours in seven minutes.

This need for flexibility led directly to installation of the first Pivatic coil processing line, a Pivatic P40.

Different ranges of Bisley cabinets use the same internal shelf positioning system based on four pressed formed panels with a series of horizontal slots to provide alternative shelf locations.

Owing to cabinet height variation these are needed in different lengths - which more or less rules out the use of hard tooling.

However the components are not well suited to production on a conventional punch press either.

Production engineer Tony Cottrell commented, 'We used to make them on our turret punch presses but the nature of the components meant that we were losing a lot of material as scrap.

There was also a great deal of manual handling involved which is not ideal on long, narrow parts produced from fairly thin gauge material.

The Pivatic machine allows us to produce the flat blank from coiled material bought in to the exact width of the finished component.' The Pivatic P40 uses a cassette-type tool system which provides four A-stations, three B-stations, three C-stations and two D-stations.

These accept thick turret tooling which is Bisley's standard punch tool system.

Positioning is achieved through a combination of coil feed and lateral movement of the cassette, while length is determined using a dedicated shear.

'It has proved to be a very cost effective means of producing these components,' said Mr Cottrell.

Apart from the slugs there is no waste material and coil is cheaper than sheet in any case.

One small regret is that we did not order the P40 line with a stacker, as we initially intended to go straight from punching to pressing.

This proved impracticable as we may produce up to thirty different product lengths from each coil; altering length on the punching line is literally a push button exercise whereas it would take much longer to change a press line over.

Later on when we bought the P80 we installed it with an off-load stacker table.

However this line is used for a wider variety of components as well as backing up the P40 on shelf location production.' Both Pivatic lines combine reliability with ease of use, operating round the clock for five days a week plus overtime.

Programming is straightforward and has encouraged use of the 800mm capacity P80 for a wide range of components.

Ease of programming and good levels of service back-up experienced with the Pivatic lines were factors in the installation of Bisley's first Finn-Power turret punch press, an F5-25.

Paul Ostrolenk said, 'Our policy on new machine purchases is to buy in the most appropriate system at any given time.

In the case of punch presses, a number of factors including speed, accuracy, build quality and service are at the top of the list; price is a secondary consideration.

There were a number of features on the Finn-Power that recommended it.

One was certainly the single track turret as all tools have equal access to all parts of the sheet - which triple track designs do not - and we also liked the machine control's capability to accept programs straight off our network.

Punching speed and ease of set-up were also factors.' Punch press profiled components at Bisley are manufactured from both standard sheet and cut blanks according to requirements.

General positional tolerance on punched features is 0.1mm, opening to 0.25mm on forms, mainly countersinks.

With 8-station and 24-station multi-tools on the F5-25, Bisley has 50 tools available in the 20-station turret including three indexing stations.

The machine is used for diverse production requirements as the company's punch pressing capacity is used both for lower volume production work and as a facility to supplement production on hard tooled resources.

As a result, relatively few turret punch jobs are scheduled for more than five hours of production per week.

This explains why the otherwise highly automated factory employs no punch press automation.

Mr Cottrell concluded, 'The Finn-Power has proved to be a very good machine.

The single track turret gives us complete flexibility on tooling placement, which is a big advantage in terms of setting up and leads to fewer compromises in programming.

Likewise the ability to program clamp positions gives us more freedom as to where we put features and speeds up re-setting.

From an operator's point of view the brush table makes it relatively quiet in operation and the conveyorised scrap removal system is a good feature.