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FMSweb™ is proud to bring you weekly articles written by experienced metal fabricators with practical information, tips and tricks that you can put to work right away in your shop. We hope you'll find these articles on tooling, supplies, machines, special applications and equipment to be helpful. We're dedicated to providing you with expert advice and practical solutions for your metal fabrication applications. Please send us a note to let us know what you think and if there's a topic of interest you'd like us to cover just let us know and we'll do our best to address it in an upcoming edition.

 • Better Bends

 • Perfect Punching

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You may be considering or wondering if unitized tooling (also known as c-frame tooling) is best suited for your metal fabricating application.

Fabricating Metal Solutions (FMS) has over 25 years of experience in evaluating these metal fabrication applications. FMS service solutions are available to you!

FMS will perform a competitive time study of your parts to determine which of these processes are best suited for you: unitized tooling, turret punch press, laser, or stamping.

  

Allow FMS to evaluate your fabrication department. Low cost of $380 per day: this includes all expenses (i.e.; food, airfare, lodging, car rental). Free consult by phone (send prints/sketch by e-mail or fax).

Pricing is east of Mississippi with POR west.

 

FMS will:

• - Interface with your company, presenting project design package, including calculations, drawings, specifications and cost estimates.
• - Written proposals for various applications of metal punched and formed products.
• - Fabrication design analysis, engineering support.
• - Production concepts - material handling suggestions for given application.
• - Access the efficiency of laser, turret press, hard tooling vs. unitized tooling.
• - Maintance program and proper set-up [ geared at lean mfg ].
• - Follow-up for optimum performance and efficiently.

Unitized tooling equals the original lean manufacturing, because it's all about through put!!

	Association for Manufacturing Technology
	Fabtech Tradeshow Information
	International Manufacturing Technology Show Information
	International Training Institute
	Laser Institute of America
	Metalform Tradeshow Information
	National Tooling & Machining Association
	Precision Metalforming Association
	Sheet Metal & Air Conditioning Contractors Association
	Society of Manufacturing

Perfect Punching

Start talking about optimizing tool life, minimizing downtime and maximizing hole quality at your next business social and you’ll probably find yourself standing alone by the punch bowl. Compared to the latest news from Wall Street or the “rags-to-riches” stories of the new Internet economy, punching holes can seem pretty dull. But if your business is fabricating products from sheet metal you probably can’t help yourself. In today’s highly competitive world of manufacturing, every efficiency counts. Tool life, downtime & part quality can mean the difference between commercial success and financial failure. Each week in this series of short articles we’ll look at time-tested, practical ways to optimize tool life, minimize downtime and maximize hole quality. It won’t make you the life of the party but it just might help you improve your profits and your products. Come to think of it, that just might make you pretty popular at work. We’ll start by looking at ways to optimize tool life and minimize downtime. The two go hand-in-hand together. Stopping operations to replace or sharpen a punch or die means increased downtime and lost productivity. Extending tool life and preventing broken tools results in more value for your tooling dollars but the significant savings come from the reduction in downtime realized by fewer interruptions to punching operations. Later in the series we’ll explore ways to maximize hole quality...

Week One.....Operator Training
Week Two.....Selecting the Right Tools & Tool-to-Die Clearance
Week Three...Installation & Alignment
Week Four....Lubrication & Special Coatings
Week Five.....Application of Tools & CNC Programming Considerations
Week Six......Pulling it All Together, Tips, Tricks & Other Folk Lore

 

Better Bends
Coming soon, 5 day primer to making better bends with your Press Brake. From set-up and tooling tips to machine maintenance, we'll help you quickly master the basics and share a few tips from the experts.