Canadian
Refrigeration Equipment Manufacturer Discovers Shear
Genius
| Finn-Power
applications engineer Andrew McCarlie (left)
inspects an upformed part with Aero-Heat’s
operator Kwok Hung Chau. Finn-Power’s
upward forming option provides more accurate
forming and greater forming heights up to 16
mm (.63”) and 5” in diameter. |
|
Aero
Heat Exchanger, Inc., Richmond, B.C., Canada, is a leading
designer and manufacturer of a wide range of specialized refrigeration
equipment and systems for the food processing (fruits, vegetables,
french fries, poultry, etc.) industry. Founded in 1979, the
company rapidly became a major supplier of refrigeration coils
and Individual Quick Frozen (IQF) freezing systems, including
freezing tunnels, blast freezers, food processing plants, and
cold storage warehouses. Today, Aero Heat sells its products
to customers throughout the world.
Aero Heat custom builds its freezers for the individual needs
of each food processing customer. The specialized experience
of Aero Heat’s application engineering staff and fabrication
craftsmen produce units that fit the space, as well as the
cooling requirements of each installation. These stainless
steel refrigeration units can be quite large, up to 200’ long,
19’ wide, and 20’ high.
As part of its policy of continually
upgrading its equipment and facilities, Aero Heat management began a search for
sheet
metal fabrication equipment to replace its two mechanical turret
punch presses during the first quarter of 2001. The company
undertook a very thorough study of all available sheet metal
fabrication equipment on the market. According to Steven So,
Aero Heat’s purchasing manager, the search team compared
all turret punch press machine builders to find the perfect
fit for their company’s needs. The spread-sheet included
information on technology, turret layout, tool capacity, speed,
and the availability of local service.
After much research and visits to fabricators’ facilities
to inspect the machines in operation, Aero Heat selected the
Shear Genius 6.4 Flexible Manufacturing Cell (FMC) from Finn-Power
International, Inc. in September 2001. “We chose the
Finn-Power Shear Genius because it was the best value for the
money with all its features, functions, and options,” explains
So.
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| With
the Shear Genius 6.4, sheets up to 60” x
144” are automatically loaded and squared
without human interference, ensuring very accurate
parts. The Shear Genius allows the automated
process to begin with a full-sized sheet of
material and end with a finished part after
automated loading, punching, forming, shearing,
and unloading – all in one operation. |
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Punch/Shear
Combination
With the Shear Genius concept, the objective is to provide
one machine capable of transforming a full-sized sheet into
finished parts. These parts can be moved to final production
stages for immediate integration directly into final product
assembly.
As loading, punching, and shearing of parts become automated,
the result is finished parts with a dramatic reduction in scrap
and manual labor while increasing profitability. The level
of automation can be customized through Finn-Power’s
flexible modular solutions for raw material storage, loading,
unloading, sorting and stacking. These features can be added
later as budgets allow and production demands increase.
The Shear Genius ease of operation does not compromise the
cell’s per minute part production, flexibility, or
ability to fabricate complex parts. On average, Shear Genius
reduces
total manufacturing time by 60% and saves one blank sheet
out of every 10.
Profitable
Transition to New Technology
Prior to purchasing the Shear Genius, Aero Heat’s fabrication
department made parts on the older mechanical turret punch
presses by either nibbling out of a precut blank or blanks
were sized in house using a 12’ shear and then punched.
All the freezer chambers and fan housings were strengthened
with welded stainless steel gussets and plates.
With the addition of the Shear Genius, time-consuming nibbling
out of the part profiles with a small indexable 0.5” square
was eliminated. This included parts up to 12’ long
in 10 gauge stainless steel 304 material. Also, secondary
shearing
operations were eliminated and standard material sizes were
used, thus, eliminating both work in process and a reduced
part process time.
The Shear Genius eliminates wasteful skeletons and costly
secondary operations such as deburring. Nibble edges on the part exteriors
were eliminated through the use of the integrated right angle
shear. Aero Heat estimates that it has realized material
savings of 15-20% with the Shear Genius. These savings are substantial
when you consider that the cost of stainless steel 304, 10
gauge can be in excess of $300/sheet.
Another Shear Genius benefit identified by operator Kwok Hung
Chau is in the material handling of the 60”x144” sheets. “Moving
these large sheets is quite difficult and often takes two men
to handle,” explains Hung. “With the Shear Genius,
we place the material on the big loader (4.2 meter) and it
does all the work. We don’t have to manually put it
on another machine for additional operations.”
 Shear Genius also eliminates the potential of mistakes when
manually shearing a 60”x144” sheet. In the Shear
Genius, the sheet is loaded and squared automatically, and
there is no human interference, ensuring very accurate parts.
In fact, the same clamps that hold the sheet for punching also
hold it for shearing. In essence, the Shear Genius allows the
automated process to begin with a full-sized sheet of material
and end with a finished part after automated loading, punching,
forming, shearing, and unloading – all in one operation.
Aero Heat estimates that it has realized material savings of
15-20% with the Shear Genius. These savings are substantial
when you consider that the cost of stainless steel 304, 10
gauge can be in excess of $300/sheet.
Other
benefits of the Shear Genius include:
Tool Holders – Finn-Power
incorporates an individual tool holder concept that allows
customers to design their own
turret layouts. Up to 10 auto-index, forming, or Multi-Tool® stations
may be installed in a Finn-Power turret. Aero Heat estimates
that by switching from a mechanical to a hydraulic turret
punch press it has cut tooling costs by 25-30%.
Auto-Index – Finn-Power’s
unique auto-index system precisely rotates the punch and
die in their tool holders
using a single A.C. servo-motor system. Rotation in .001
degree programmable
increments gives the machine the ability to rotate beyond
360 degrees, thus allowing the system to automatically select
the
shortest path to rotate to a programmed angle input into
the NC part program with simplicity, speed, and reliability.
Aero
Heat has five auto-index stations.
Multi-Tool® – Finn-Power’s
Multi-Tool stations increase the number of tools available in a turret, thus
reducing
set-up and increasing productivity. The Multi-Tool system
allows multiple tools to be put in one station. Finn-Power Multi-Tool
offers 6, 8, 10, or 24 different punch/die combinations in
only one station-a turret within a turret. Aero Heat has
two 8-station and one 10-station Multi-Tools.
Upward Forming System – Finn-Power’s upward forming
option provides more accurate forming and greater forming heights
up to 16 mm (.63”) and 5” in diameter. Another
advantage is that all upforming dies are at the same height
as the standard dies in the turret, thus, reducing risk of
material damage and increasing machine uptime.
At Aero-Heat, the use of the Finn-Power
upward forming feature enables the fast production of pierce and extruded holes
in
one operation in both 0.125 aluminum and 14 gauge stainless
steel 304 materials. The ability to reverse form in such
thick materials and retract the form die after use added to the reduced
cycle time for such parts along with the ability to multiple
nest such parts on sheets up to 60”x144”.
Wheel Technology Applications – The
use of wheel technology in the Finn-Power turret punch press enabled the production
of prestiffened panels that reduced production costs by eliminating
the need for costly stainless steel 304 stiffening gussets
in the wall, floor, and fan panels of the units. Utilizing
wheel technology has also enabled Aero-Heat to produce customer
logos and features on their products that were previously
not possible due to time and cost constraints.
Aero Heat Heat operates the Shear Genius two shifts,
six days per week. The company estimates that the Shear Genius is twice
as productive as the previous two mechanical turret punch
presses. The Shear Genius FMC has helped Aero Heat increase its production
capacity, reduce its Work In Progress (WIP), and enable a
significantly faster turnaround of this large custom product in its sheet
metal fabrication area. Concludes Aero Heat’s purchasing
manager Steven So, “Aero Heat can provide its customers
quick delivery at a competitive price because of our investment
in the latest in sheet metal technology."
To
obtain a copy of the complete Aero Heat Exchanger,
Inc. customer profile, contact Tiina Alanko at (847)
885 3200 or tiina@finnpower.com
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710
Remington Road 
Volume
13 Issue 1 -
July 2003