Publikacijos

Working in metal fabrication can sometimes require employees to engage in high-risk activities in order to properly perform their duties, including weld and manufacture ferrous materials. If you manage or are responsible for safety in a metal manufacturing facility, you know of the potential hazards that can befall workers.

The only way to reduce costs and increase productivity, solving the personnel shortage issue for the Baltic engineering and metal fabrication industry is manufacturing process automation and inventory digitization. Significant investments are required to achieve this, and so this process evolves slowly. The author looks into issues that arise in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and examples of their solution.

Due to a variety of hazards found in the workplace environment, metal fabrication can be a potentially dangerous industry if employees do not closely adhere to safety regulations. Fortunately, in recent years, the rate of non-fatal injuries in the industry has significantly dropped, indicating that safer equipment and effective safety regulations are successfully helping prevent common injuries.

The article's author, a metal fabrication professional, not only talks about best practices of maximizing punch tool and machine life, sharing his tips, but also gives an insight into the process of punching itself and some significant matters that need special attention in order to achieve the best results.

Many small job shops all over the world are still working with old mechanical press brakes with tooling from a different time, though both the machine and tooling have been well-maintained. I am sure many of us are still using these older mechanical press brakes, or press brakes that are just a little more basic than the state-of-the-art systems the articles usually discuss.

To gain efficiencies for complex jobs, fabricators turn to staged bending. Multiple tool sets are arranged next to each other across the press brake bed, allowing an operator to run a complex part, or a series of different parts, all in one setup.

When you need a new CNC machine, either to replace an existing one that has reached the end of its life cycle or to expand production, you have to consider all the factors that impact productivity, output quality and economic viability. Ideally your new machine will be able to carry out tasks that you currently handle and add a few new functions.

Today’s fabricators look to automation to deal with complex parts, shorter batches, and reduced lead times. One way to improve production performance is to decrease bottlenecks in the production cycle. Because bottlenecks often occur at the press brake stage, adding automation to a press brake can alleviate this stress and increase productivity.

With the large increase in productivity fabricators have experienced with the advent of faster laser cutting systems, press brake operations have increasingly been considered a key bottleneck on production floors. Many shops are investing in newer press brakes that allow for faster setup times. If that isn’t yet an option for your shop, however, it’s still important to ensure your press brake is running at peak efficiency. Here are four ways in which you can make certain you are getting the most out of your existing system.

Metal fabrication is a broad business, and additive manufacturing has serious potential for a surprising number of applications, from scale models of large fabrications to a variety of tools and fixtures.