Since an automated pressworking cell was installed at a heating and ventilating equipment manufacturer, it says new the facility is 50 per cent faster than stand-alone turret punch presses.

A new Finn-Power automated pressworking cell has been installed at one of the Blackpool factories of heating and ventilating equipment manufacturer, Gilberts. Joint Managing Director, Willie Greenwood, comments that as sheet is always available to feed into the machine, the facility is 50 per cent faster than stand-alone turret punch presses of equivalent specification on site. Installed last summer (2001) by Press and Shear, UK agent for the Finnish press manufacturer, the 'A5 Express' cell incorporates a loading station that holds up to three tonnes of material.

A gantry-mounted gripper head delivers single zintec or stainless steel sheets up to 2,530 mm x 1,270 mm and from 0.7 to 2.0 mm thick to the adjacent press in a matter of seconds.

Says Greenwood : 'We operate two CNC turret presses without auto feed, but wanted to raise productivity without increasing overheads.

In addition, there are issues relating to Health and Safety, such as back pain and cut fingers when manually handling sheet.

Automation was the obvious answer so we researched the market for suitable products.

'We chose Finn-Power because the gantry was integrated with the machine rather than being an add-on, so there were no interfacing problems.

The cell was also good value for money, and in addition, I had worked with Press and Shear in a previous job and always found the after-sales service to be good.

'And so it has proved; the performance of the A5 Express with its fully adjustable, hydraulic stroke has been absolutely fantastic in terms of uptime, rate of production and quality of output, and the minimal back-up we have needed has been prompt and friendly.' Gilbert's air distribution, smoke and fire control products, almost exclusively for commercial buildings, require relatively simple sheet metalwork in their construction but are produced in an astonishingly large number of sizes and permutations.

One standard product line, for instance, is available in 1.9 million variants.

It is therefore essential to have flexibility of production, to which end the company's policy is to machine families of parts from a sheet, as pictured in photograph 2, for which this particular batch run was 60-off.

Production Manager, Ian Blackburn, advises that only about 10 per cent of throughput is accounted for by production of identical parts nested on a sheet, in which case they will be commonly used components and are produced in quantities of up to 3,000 at a time.

Comments Blackburn, 'Three tonnes of material on the input table gives us unattended running for more than six hours, so we try to run sequences of jobs that use the same material as much as we can.

The load station is then replenished by lift truck.

On the off-take side, the punched and nibbled sheets are stacked automatically beneath the exit conveyor, a section of which slides to one side from under the sheet.

They are then handled manually for the components to be de-tagged and removed by hand.' The majority of operations are punching and nibbling at speeds up to 600 hits per minute, while traversing at 100m/min contributes further to short machining times.

Some in-cycle forming is also carried out for producing such features as louvres and countersunk holes, plus some embossing for location purposes.

The turret on the Finn-Power is larger than on Gilberts' other presses and more extensive use of multi-tools increases the number of stations available to the point where the need for tool change is rare.

According to Blackburn, the company's products are being systematically redesigned to take advantage of the resulting production flexibility, reducing the need for second operations such as notching and guillotining.

'It allows us to make our products faster, better and more economically,' he said, 'and to set new standards for best practice in our industry.' Greenwood has been encouraged by his first move into automated pressworking and intends to phase in further cells when his other punch presses become due for replacement.

As there are a lot of long, straight machined sections on his products, he says he may well consider the Finn-Power 'Shear Genius' next time to take advantage of its fast right angle shear, which like the gantry is an integrated feature, not an add-on.

He was also impressed at the last metalworking 2002 exhibition in Birmingham with the Finnish company's linear motor laser-profiling machine, which attains cutting speeds of up to 20m/min.

'I always thought that laser machines were for intricate profiling, but very high speeds combined with the absence of tooling costs and lower capital outlay makes them much more attractive for our work,' he says.

'Punch press and laser technologies are converging and it makes sense to exploit the best features of both; we would also consider punch / laser combination machines the next time around.