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by Brad F. Kuvin
Editor
MetalForming
Magazine
Since its battering during World War II, tiny
Finland - a mere 130,500 sq. miles with a population of 5.1
million - has tightened its collective belt and made more
than just an economic recovery. Finland ranks second in percentage
of GDP spent on research and development; ranks as a world
leader in literacy, mathematics and science; claims the highest
per-capita use of mobile phones; and, according to the United
Nations Development Report of 2001, was "the most technologically
advanced country in the world."
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| Finnish company Halton manufactures a variety of indoor-climate products - air-distribution units, fire dampers and commercial-kitchen ventilation products for example - some of which it fabricates from prepainted and galvanized sheetmetal. |
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When you get to see Finland
the way I did last September - with a bird's-eye view of
several state-of-the-art metalforming and fabricating plants - you
quickly appreciate what this country has accomplished. Along
with its obvious dedication to continuous education and learning - Finland
scores the highest in all of Europe in enrollment in universities
and technical colleges - you can't help but appreciate its
unrelenting investment in advanced and cutting-edge metalworking
technology.
Thanks to the efforts of metalforming-equipment
manufacturer Finn-Power, I, along with editors from other
U.S. publications, toured several impressive shops throughout
Finland, as well as Italy. Finn-Power operates its headquarters
out of Kauhava, Finland, along with an R&D center and two
assembly plants. It also operates two manufacturing plants
in Alaharma, Finland, and a manufacturing and assembly plant
in Vilppula, Finland. Its bending-automation division resides
in Cologna Veneta, Italy, near Verona.
 Lakeuden
Levytyo Oy, Seinajoki, Finland, manufactures postal-sorting
equipment, fabricating a variety of shelves and carts.
Investment in laser technology has helped the firm develop
its growing prototype business while minimizing any interruption
to production. |
First Stop: Climate-Control
Specialists Halton Oy
In its two Finnish plants, Halton Oy
has invested in a bevy of new sheetmetal punching machines,
bending equipment and automation apparatus. The firm designs
and builds heating, cooling and ventilation systems, airflow-management
products, air-diffusion products and fire dampers.
A plant
in Kausala, Finland, specializes in indoor ventilation products,
processing primarily galvanized steel 0.5 to 1.5 mm thick.
It's busy, running three shifts a day, seven days a week.
Coil-fed cut-to-length lines process 3000 tons of steel per
year to feed the 215,000-sq.-ft. plant.
One focus for the
facility has been part consolidation to improve productivity.
It invested, in March 2003, in a Finn-Power Express Bender
automated bending machine that its engineers credit with
eliminating several assembly operations - riveting for example.
We saw one complex formed part fabricated on the bender that
previously was made from five separate parts.
A second Halton
plant, Halton Marine in Lahti, Finland, manufactures foodservice
products such as exhaust hoods and ventilated ceilings, as
well as HVAC equipment for ships and offshore installations.
The plant installed in early 2003 a robot-tended press brake
to work three shifts (lights-out on the third shift) to feed
hungry assembly lines. An automated guided vehicle keeps
the robotic press brake equipped with blank stacks while
a six-axis robot rides a 12-m-long track to move blanks to
and from the 3-m 160-ton press brake.
Robotic Brake Fuels Growth of Startup
Job Shop
Since 2001, the Metallilaite Oy
plant in Riihimaki, Finland, a division of Metalliset Group,
has seen its volume double, and it expects growth to continue.
The two-year-old Metallilaite plant provides sheetmetal
components for customers making elevators, cranes and appliances
(its latest growth spurt has come from stainless-steel
fabrication of refrigerators and other kitchen goods).
It's
here where we viewed the Finn-Power E-Series servo-electric
turret press with material load and unload. It feeds a
robotic press brake, installed in August 2003, which works
three shifts to produce grocery-store fixtures for the
plant's newest customer. These
are shelves fabricated in several sizes, in lots of 300 or
more.
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Several of the sheetmetal-fabrication shops we visited throughout Finland and Italy center around a Finn Power Night Train material-management system comprising long lineups of stacked sheet-storage racks. Often, a combination of punch-laser, punch-shear, stand-alone punch and stand-alone lasers work on one side of the Night Train (top, a punch-laser), while press brakes and automated bending machines (bottom, an Express Bender) work on the other side. |
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Linear-Drive Technology
Hits Punch/Laser Combo
Linear-drive technology has in recent
years brought benefits to most every type of metalworking
machinery, taking speed and precision to new levels. In
2002 Finn-Power added linear-drive technology to its punch-laser
combination machines with the introduction of the Laser
Brilliance cell, which we saw operating at sheetmetal job
shop Lakeuden Levytyo Oy in Seinajoki, Finland. Its primary
product niche is postal-sorting equipment, which has it
manufacturing a variety of shelves and carts. The company
operates seven press brakes, a laser-cutting machine with
load/unload, a Finn-Power Shear Brilliance punch/ shear
cell (also with linear-drive technology) and the Laser Brilliance
cell, purchased in 2003.
The Laser Brilliance at Lakeuden
Levytyo uses a 3.5-kW laser to cut aluminum work to 6 mm
thick and stainless steel to 8 mm thick, and includes a built-in
tapping unit. It can handle sheets up to 3 by 1.5 m. The
investment in laser technology has helped Lakeuden Levytyo
develop its growing prototype business while minimizing any
interruption to production. It has 150 customers and runs
jobs as small as five to 10 pieces. From here we traveled
to Vaasa, Finland, to visit a former ABB plant now owned
and operated by Incap Electronics Oy. The plant makes transformer
components and is built around a Finn-Power Night Train material-management
system. The 40-m-long Night Train stores raw sheetmetal
blanks and partially processed work on 300 shelves. A pair
of Shear Genius punch-shear combination machines toil on
one side of the Night Train and six press brakes work on
the other. Sheets automatically move in and out of the Night
Train to keep the work flowing with minimal, or sometimes
no, operator intervention. InCap purchased the Night Train
in 2000, shortly after taking over the plant from ABB, and
boasts a 100-percent productivity jump from its sheetmetal-fabrication
area as a result of the investment. The 97,000-sq.-ft. plant
processes 5000 tons of sheet per year, primarily 1- to 3-mm-thick
galvanized stock. The Night Train allows the shop to run
an unmanned third shift.
Off to Italy
From Vaasa, our journalistic assemblage hopped
a flight to Italy where we darted in and out of several highly
automated sheetmetal shops. First stop was Fratelli Tamellin,
a 22-employee family-owned job shop housing a 55-m-long Night
Train. The firm runs a laser-punch combination machine and
a shear-punch machine over three shifts, and an automated
Finn Power Express Bender over two shifts, making primarily
components for office furniture, kitchen appliances and electronic
assemblies.
Among the work we saw underway was bending
of prepainted doors used in prefabricated construction. The
plant manager boasted of the ability to form the panels without
stretching the sheetmetal, in order to avoid cracking the
coating. Each door requires 20 bends, and the machine turns
out 50 doors per hour.
Our tour then took us to what is referred
to as "stainless-steel
valley," where a concentration of stainless-steel fabricators
resides in and around Pordenone, Italy. Here we toured
Tecnoinox, a stainless-steel fabricator serving the restaurant-kitchen
equipment market. It, too, operates an Express Bender,
purchased in December 2002, to take on bending work that
the firm says would have required the purchase of two
press brakes.
Express Benders come in four models with
maximum bend length from 65 to 127 in., for sheet to
137.7 in. long in widths to 64 in. The bender typically
works a blank at its edges, starting at the external
edge of a sheet and continuing to the internal part
of the sheet to complete a sequence of bends. A manipulator
holds the work during all manipulation phases of the
process, and bends can be made upward and downward.
Tecnoinox, which
operates a Model EB 3 (65-in. bend length) bender, processes
3000 kg of stainless steel per day, punching on two shifts
and bending on one. The bender provides setup-time reduction,
flexibility and automatic tool changes that yield a 40-percent
increase in productivity, the firm says, over press brakes.
All
New in 2002
Textile-making machines-that's the business that
keeps Megal Arredamenti Metallici busy. Half of this 54-employee
firm's business is textile-making machinery, the
other half job-shop work. In 2002, this small $4-million-Euro firm purchased
a laser-punch combo, a Night Train flexible-manufacturing system, a shear-punch
combo and an Express Bender. Since, it's seen a 50-percent increase in production
volume, and expects to nearly double its revenue in 2004.
Touring the 86,000-sq.-ft.
sheetmetal-fabrication plant, we spied the one-year-old bender performing a
step-bending sequence to form rolled edges onto 2-mm-thick
stock for a television stand. A 54-m-long Night Train handles
stock for the plant that ranges from 0.6 to 6 mm thick; 70
percent of the sheetmetal that runs through is mild steel,
for textile machinery; the remainder is stainless steel,
for subcontract work.
 Mondial
Forni Verona, Italy, designs and manufactures stainless-steel
bakery and pastry-making equipment. It houses a 70-m-long
Night Train and the largest Express Bender available,
127-in. bend length, to handle the long sheetmetal parts
needed to manufacture equipment that the firm sells to
pizzerias, bakeries and restaurants. |
From here
we traveled to a shop in Verona dedicated primarily to stainless-steel fabrication,
Mondial Forni, which designs and manufactures bakery and pastry-making equipment.
A 70-m Night Train and the largest Express Bender available, 127-in. bend length,
handle the long sheetmetal parts needed to manufacture equipment that the firm
sells to pizzerias, bakeries and restaurants. The 108,000-sq.-ft. plant also
houses a shear-punch combination machine, although management plans to replace
it in 2004 with a Laser Brilliance punch-laser combo for improved edge quality
and fitup.
The Longest Train
in Italy
Nearing the end
of our technology tour, we next traveled to a large subcontract
shop, Iltom. Iltom's 110-m long Night Train feeds a pair of Shear Genius punch-shear
combination machines and a Shear Brilliance linear-drive combination machine
(purchased in early 2003), three stand-alone turret punch presses, a punch-laser
combo, two automated benders and an FPL 6 flying-optics laser-cutting machine.
Management built the plant in 1999, and designed it around the huge Night Train.
We
left the very busy Iltom shop for our final visit, to an Otis facility in Milan
that manufactures elevator cars. The plant has seen enormous growth in production
volumes and now manufactures 7000 cars per year, up from 1500 per year in 1992
and 4000 per year in 1995. It's brought in much new sheetmetal-fabrication
equipment to handle the work, and now boasts a capacity of 11,000 cars per year.
Volume
took its biggest jump in 2000, prompting the plant to invest in a new Shear
Genius punch-shear machine, an Express Bender and a new Night
Train to minimize outsourcing. The new equipment provides
the flexibility needed to satisfy demands for custom designs
and sizes of cars. Lead-time reduction requirements also
drove the investments, and the plant now quotes a three-day
lead-time compared to a one-week lead-time in 1999.
 Reprinted
with permission from the
January 2004 issue of
MetalForming
www.metalformingmagazine.com
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Volume
14 Issue 1 -
July 2004