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.

FiFab celebrated its 25th anniversary by buying a new punching facility from Trumpf. The investment was not just one machine, but a flexible cell, based on a Trumatic 500 and automatic handling.

The Kingdom of Fife is no longer restricted to a well-defined area in eastern Scotland; it now stretches as far west as California and as far east as Japan. Glenrothes-based Fife Fabrications - more succinctly known as FiFab - produce sheet-metal components and electronic assemblies. The last seven years has seen a four-fold increase in their turnover to more than GBP10 million, with a commensurate increase in the size and spread of their domain.

Prominent in their customer base is a series of blue-chip, multi-national companies.

It includes household names in computers, telecoms, avionics, and general electronics.

Fife products are therefore found in all parts of the industrialised world.

Founded in 1972 FiFab, like many sheet-metal sub-contractors at that time, built its early manufacturing facility around turret-punches - several of which served the company well for its first quarter century.

However, conscious of it's need to improve both productivity and flexibility to meet ever increasing customer expectations, FiFab celebrated its 25th anniversary by buying a new punching facility from Trumpf.

The investment was not just a punching machine, but a flexible manufacturing cell, based on a Trumatic 500 and incorporating SheetMaster automated material load and unload.

Not only did this facility enable long periods of unmanned operation, but - perhaps more importantly - it enabled FiFab to help its clients reduce their 'time-to-market'.

This was so successful that it was joined by a second identical cell a year later.

FiFab's spectacular growth has been due in no small measure to the vision and drive of MD Archie Smith, who has always striven to produce his clients 'leading-edge' products on appropriately 'state-of-the-art' equipment.

However, modestly but rightly he will claim that the successful implementation of new manufacturing philosophies has been a team effort.

The success of the Trumpf installation is down to the enthusiasm with which his team has embraced and exploited newer ideas and processes.

Success breeds success, but improvements breed yet higher expectations- particularly from customers who demand ever-greater flexibility and ever-more rapid responses.

So yet more investment was needed.

In Archie Smith's words 'We had already taken one successful step up the technology ladder, and now another one was necessary.' But this was not a small step for man - more a giant leap for manufacturing - it involved not just buying another machine, not even buying another flexible cell, but buying a GBP1.5 million FMS incorporating four machines with full material storage and handling.

At the heart of the new system are two of Trumpf's new TC5000 punch-presses.

In evolutionary terms these machines - with their faster head rotation, higher hit rates, and above all high accelerations - mark as big a step forward as the 'old' TC500 did over its predecessors when launched some 10 years ago.

Each of the new machines will be fed with material by a new SheetMaster load and unload device, which is also noticeably faster than its predecessor.

The improved speeds of processing and handling are such that on typical electronics and telecoms components, time-savings of between 25 and 35% will be experienced.

Like the TC500s, the new TC5000s each have an 18 station linear tool magazine mounted on the X-axis guide rail.

However, one of the new machines is equipped with a Trumatool automated tool-store.

This option enables an additional 40 tool-sets to be stored 'live'.

As with the standard linear magazine, all stations can hold all tools including Multitools.

As all tools are rotatable, the tool capacity of this particular machine is theoretically of the order of several hundred.

This enables a number of different jobs to be produced without manual intervention.

But a bigger benefit to companies such as FiFab - who produce for low batch, 'tool-intensive' industries such as electronics - is the ability with Trumatool to exchange tools for resetting or refurbishing without interruption to the machine-cycle.

A further benefit to FiFab will be the ability to inject an urgently required 'one-off' into the middle of a larger running batch, and to do it as Archie Smith's adds - 'At the flick of a switch.' The two TC5000 cells with their SheetMasters are in turn linked to a twin-tower material store of 31 locations, that provides an automated supply of raw-material to the cells at any hour of the day, night, or week-end.

When a new programme is activated from the job queue in the machine control, it will - after checking the availability of both tools and material - send for a pallet of appropriate raw material from the store.

This is delivered to a location under the SheetMaster from which individual sheets are loaded to the machine.

In processing, medium and large components are removed to pallets and stacked in known locations, and can be subsequently fork-trucked to follow-on operations.

Smaller components, scrap-pieces, and punch-slugs are dropped into bins and similarly trucked away, as are residual material skeletons once they have been removed from the machine-table by a Trumagrip device.

The original material pallet, along with any unused material is returned to the store, put back in and the stock is appropriately adjusted, and ultimately re-ordered.

In addition to the above-mentioned FMS- comprising twin TC5000 cells and store - the existing two TC500 cells, will be re-located and linked to a duplicate 31 station automated store to create a double FMS facility.

This will be the largest in the UK, and one of the largest in the world.

In preparation for this installation FiFab has completely re-planned its shop-layout.

Thanks to the use of the two automated stores, this has enabled the company to release some 300m2 of floorspace from material storage to more value-adding activities.

In association with Trumpf, Fife Fabrications, is in the process of creating a truly world-class manufacturing facility to match its reputation as a supplier of world-class products to an international client-base.

Extending its customer support programme for punch press and press brake tooling, Wilson Tool International Europe has built a customer support and technical centre near Hannover, Germany.

Extending its customer support programme for punch press and press brake tooling, Wilson Tool International Europe has built a 960m2 customer support and technical centre at Rodenberg, just 25 Km west of Hannover in Germany. The inaugural 'first dig' was performed by Mr Ernst August Meir, Mayor of the town on 22 May with Colin Blackwell managing director European Operations and Klaus Ludwig Neumann European Sales Manager. Set on a 5,000m2 site purchased by Wilson Tool, the new 960m2 facility will include a 320m2 technical centre and is due to be opened in December to service Germany, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, the East of Europe and former Russian areas.

Wilson Tool set up its current customer operations in Germany in 1987 under Klaus Ludwig Neumann, European Sales Manager.

Since then, the market has grown at a rate of 15 per cent each year.

There are no current plans to manufacture tooling at the facility, instead customers will benefit from the fast and well-proven next day service from the UK for standard tools and the fastest currently available for specials.

Says Colin Blackwell Managing Director of Wilson Tool International Europe: 'The objective of the Rodenberg facility is to build closer relationships with customers, perform seminars on tooling, tool management and tool service and provide front line problem solving.

A further benefit of the technical centre which will feature installations of punch presses and press brakes from leading manufacturers will be to and stage a permanent tooling exhibition.

The site is within a 25 minute drive of Hannover airport and close to the important trunk road network providing quick access to service the whole European mainland.

Also, with major exhibitions being staged at Hannover Messe, this will provide a vital communication link for Wilson Tool.

Maintains Klaus Neumann: 'Our customers demand production flexibility and ever higher levels of service to support the growing installations of punch presses.

Growing use of automation and new machine designs, the need to run around the clock and problems in obtaining and retaining labour capable of running ever smaller batch sizes, means we have to be slick, professional, proactive and competitive to meet customer needs.' The move to the new premises will take place between Christmas and New Year which will mean no loss of customer service.

Among reasons cited for an order for a TC5000 cell were productivity improvements of 30-40% over an earlier TC500 and 3-4 times as much work out of the floorspace vacated by an exisiting TC240.

Among reasons cited for an order for a TC5000 cell were productivity improvements of 30-40% over an earlier TC500 and therefore an ability to get 3-4 times as much work out of the floorspace vacated by an exisiting TC240. For some years now the name Broxton has been synonymous with quality sheet metal sub-contract. However, this alone is no longer fully descriptive of Broxton's comprehensive design and manufacturing service.

From being a typically reactive sheetmetal sub-contractor, they have, progressively, over the last three years and under the guidance of MD Marcus Ellams, become a highly pro-active and innovative provider of sheetmetal design and manufacturing solutions to an ever-widening range of clients.

A visit to their Cirencester facility shows how they have done this and achieved a 50% growth in the last 12 months alone - quality and professionalism exude from everything that they do.

The arrival of Marcus Ellams at the company led to the introduction of new customer services, new management ideas, and investment in new technology.

They have become a market leader in the design and manufacture of electronic enclosures - creating a 'one-stop shop' by adding finishing and assembly operations to their 'best in class' sheetmetal facility.

They have evolved an innovative employee empowerment structure, that has led to production personnel taking full responsibility for direct customer contact in the making and maintaining of order promises.

Nearly 21/2 years ago they invested in a flexible sheetmetal cell - comprising a Trumatic 500 with SheetMaster.

Their investment in the TC500 cell was, in its way, as significant a step forward as their very first venture into CNC had been with a TC240 in the mid 1980's.

It was the first time that an English sub-contractor had made such an investment, and in Marcus Ellams' own words - it enabled them to enter the 'Premier League'.

From the very first day after commissioning, the facility has run 'lights-out' at night and in every week since installation they have averaged more than 100 hours of production.

On weekdays the facility is minimally manned, an operator being present to prepare and pre-set jobs to provide material and remove batches of finished parts.

On weekday nights the cell runs unmanned until its load is complete, which is usually between 4 and 12 hours.

At weekends a duty operator makes periodic visits to site to remove and replenish material, but on a Monday morning the machines run-time clock invariably shows that they have achieved at least 45 hours of production since Friday afternoon.

The output of this cell has been the major factor in enabling Broxton to meet a significant increase in demand for services.

When a company achieves the growth rates that Broxton are experiencing, a policy of continuous investment becomes a necessity.

They had, by now, experienced the real productivity benefits of working larger standard sheets on full head-rotation machines.

Replacing an older TC240 machine with a TC500 would have significantly increased punching capacity - without an increase in the floor space required.

However, their need for a new machine coincided with the launch of Trumpf's new TC5000 - which offered even greater benefits.

Therefore, for the third time in 15 years, Broxton have shown their conviction in new technology and Trumpf's ability to provide it, by ordering one of the first TC5000's in the UK.

Among reasons cited for this order were productivity improvements of 30-40% over the TC500 and therefore an ability to get 3-4 times as much work out of the floorspace vacated by the current TC240.

It would also provide the means to maintain keen unit prices in an increasingly competitive market.

A further attraction was the Trumpf Multishear tool used to achieve highest edge quality at fastest profiling rates; this is very important in the quality conscious market in which they operate.

And last but by no means least was the ability to retro-fit a SheetMaster onto the TC5000, which will unlock the potential of unmanned night and weekend working in the near future.

Broxton know that a major factor in their success is their ability to offer a quality service to their customers and acknowledge that a major constituent of this is their world class machinery, such as their new TC5000 from Trumpf.

B/E Aerospace's fabrications department has met the lean challenge by introducing Wilson Tool International's microtagging system, which has improved workflow and reduced second operations.

If you have ever flown in a Boeing airliner, the chances are that your journey will have been spent sitting in a seat produced by B/E Aerospace. The company has a strong presence in the UK, with factories in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and recently, the English site, at Leighton Buzzard, has responded to the challenge of market demands by instigating a lean manufacturing programme. As part of that exercise, the sheet metal fabrications department has been very closely involved with Wilson Tool International of Swindon to provide valuable technical input on tooling technology.

As a result, the adoption of microtagging, on-machine part marking using Wilson's dot marking system and in-process forming of countersinks are just three initial changes to create important results.

Enhancements to B/E Aerospace working practices have led to significant improvements in work flow, reduced second operation processes and savings of 30 hours of production time a week.

Mark Sutton, cell supervisor for the punching department, commented: 'Six months ago we would punch out a batch of components, wait for them to be deburred and then second operation any countersinks or part marking.

This created a bottleneck; even though we had four people working on deburring they just couldn't keep up.

Now with micro-tagging, we only need two people deburring.

We also have a good work flow which applies to part marking and countersinking.

From a quality angle, we've benefited from using Wilson's Slug-hugger dies as they eliminate any under surface scratching.

Our turn-around on urgent jobs has also improved considerably.' B/E Aerospace is also progressively adopting Wilson's 2.4.1TM tooling system, which enables the effective operational life of its punch press tooling to be doubled.

Wilson's 2.4.1 was originally developed for fixed head tooling applications such as those found on Trumpf, Pullmax and Euromac punch presses.

It has the key advantage of increasing the regrind life of an otherwise standard tool through the use of a precision ground spacer.

The tool system also incorporates direct keying which allows quick and simple loading of punches into the machine without any need for pre-setting.

Mark Sutton explains: 'Wilson's 2.4.1 is one of those simple ideas that makes you wonder why no-one did it years ago.

As we constantly use a lot of slotting tools, this means we are expecting to see a significant reduction in tool costs.' Ed Close, the B/E Aerospace technical engineer involved with the lean manufacturing project comments: 'Although we have purchased tooling from Wilson Tool International for some time, we had never taken advantage of their technical training services.

However, the lean manufacturing project provided an incentive as we were targeting cost reductions through improved methods.' He continued: 'From our involvement with Wilson we learned a lot and have been able to put some of the ideas into practice straight away.

Both microtagging and part marking came directly from their seminars.

But what is important is our longer term thinking because we now appreciate 'cause and effect' in respect of tool performance and how correctly applied tool maintenance benefits tool performance and hence part quality.' He follows on to outline as they now know where to look, they will probably find tooling will last far longer.

'The seminars certainly opened our eyes to what is possible however, we still have to balance these improvements against our re-programming workload.

But most important, we know there is still a large potential for additional savings.' The fabrication shop at Leighton Buzzard is equipped with a wide variety of quality equipment.

The main sheet metal profiling resources are a pair of Trumpf Trumatic 240R punch presses bought in the early 1990s.

Fabrication requirements range from small brackets to large boxes, in batches between 10 and 10,000 and most are dynamically nested on 2 metre by 1 metre standard sheet.

Around 75 per cent of material processed is aluminium, however, some steel and stainless steels have to be machined.

Material thickness ranges from 0.5mm up to 5.0mm, though the average tends to be around 0.9mm and part complexity can require up to 16 bends.

In addition to flat patterns, a number of blanked components are also produced.

While B/E Aerospace has been able to achieve significant improvements through a relatively modest investment in tooling for the 110,000 part numbers that it currently produces, around 44,000 are sheet metal components.

Ed Close acknowledges there is considerable potential for improvement in production methods but is equally sure that a slightly cautious approach is called for.

'Before we go too far, too fast,' he says, 'we need to analyse where we can get the most benefit.

If we substantially alter the way that a component is produced, it can then mean altering or re-writing the part program.

That's obviously going to be more cost-effective if the part is in regular manufacture and produced in large batches.

In addition, because we're making parts for aerospace application, we need CAA approval for any changes in the manufacturing process.

'With that said, we've already seen significant benefits from lean manufacturing initiatives and Wilson's input has definitely assisted us along that path.

There are areas where we could do more on the punch presses.

One is the use of form tools for cold form threading to replace the use of threaded inserts,' says Ed Close.

The company is also considering how certain other components might be more accurately and economically produced by using Wilson developed progressive tooling for use on the punch presses.

For instance, the shop recently completed a batch of 10,000 match-box sized brackets.

These were shaped like a squared-off table tennis bat and the first part of the punching operation entailed using a radius tool to produce six curved external corners.

A similar tool was used to produce two internal corner radii.

'A progressive type blanking tool will cut the time on that part dramatically and we are currently discussing the possible adoption of this technique,' says Ed Close.

The combination of lean manufacturing practices with technical advice from Wilson Tool has worked well for B/E Aerospace.

So far, the productivity benefits have been quantifiable and are on-going.

But, equally important is the effect on morale.

As Mark Sutton concluded: 'We've learned a lot, been able to put significant improvements into practice and have seen the benefits come through quite quickly.

That's encouraged us as a team to try other ideas, which means the lean manufacturing process is beginning to gain its own momentum.'

Slitting die tooling system for CNC punch presses uses a tough and wear-resistant premium tool steel for the slitting die blade to offer twice the regrind life of standard tooling.

The Wilson 2-4-1 Slitting Die system is the latest innovation developed by Wilson Tool. The 2-4-1 Slitting Die system offers twice the regrind life over a standard solid die. The Slitting Die blade is manufactured from Ultima, a premium tool steel which is tough and resistant, excelling in applications which demand long-term wear resistance and toughness.

Ultima can further extend the tool life by up to 400% compared with a standard die, representing considerable cost-savings on replacement tooling.

The special die insert, exclusive to Wilson Tool, is fully supported by the die base which is made of a special shock-absorbent steel designed to resist the repeated impact that can sometimes cause conventional dies to crack.

As the die insert is reground, the shims supplied with the assembly can be used to return the die assembly to the correct height.

When the die insert wears out, a new 2-4-1 insert can be purchased for less than the price of a standard replacement die.