Press brake owners, fabricators, and machine shops should consider several critical areas for running a successful business. These include controlling costs of press brake operations, improving productivity, and ensuring quality output to achieve customer satisfaction. When these principles guide your decisions, they will help you reach your company’s long-term performance, strategic, financial, and operational goals.
The following are considerations for press brake owners to be used to guide decision-making.
Controlling Costs: Press Brake Operations
The most costly part of press brake ownership is the time it takes to get it running and then keep it running at peak performance. Therefore, press brake owners should keep in mind the TOTAL cost of ownership, not just the cost of buying and replacing your machine.
Employee training:
- Purchase well-supported and easy-to-use machines: Make ease of use, support, and design documentation a factor for buying a press brake. If the manufacturer does not provide educational resources to make it easy to train your employees, you may want to take your business elsewhere. Furthermore, you may need to reach out to someone for technical support if a key employee leaves your company.
- Invest in technical staff: If you are buying a press brake or press brake controls, it is sometimes challenging to quantify the training costs of your employees. You will want to budget enough to train your staff or even hire new operators who will run and maintain the equipment.
- Put the right person in charge: Most press brakes come with operations, safety, and maintenance manuals; however, putting them into practice requires competence. Selecting a key technical person in charge of employee training and procedures is one of the most critical decisions you can make.
- Keep documentation in a safe place: Make a digital copy and backup your press brake manual and system documentation on your network (intranet) in an easy-to-find location. A manual is essential to your press brake operations, and unfortunately, they can get lost or misplaced.
- Purchase well-supported and easy-to-use machines: Make ease of use, support, and design documentation a factor for buying a press brake. If the manufacturer does not provide educational resources to make it easy to train your employees, you may want to take your business elsewhere. Furthermore, you may need to reach out to someone for technical support if a key employee leaves your company.
Press brake safety and maintenance
- Make maintenance a priority: Always follow the maintenance schedules outlined in your specific press brake manual. Implementing ongoing daily, monthly and annual maintenance tasks as part of your standard operating procedures will keep your employees and investment safe. Furthermore, reducing your downtime and associate costs will become significant over the long term as you see lower operating expenses and lower costs associated with new equipment and hiring technical support.
- Invest in tooling systems: Systems that seat tooling correctly can save time and prevent damage. Press brake tooling systems are usually an add-on or an optional feature when purchasing a press brake, but they can make maintenance easier and eliminate problems.
- Save on repair costs: In addition to the loss in production time, businesses need to cover unplanned costs associated with onsite visits since service calls are required to restore operations from broken-down machines.
Job setup time and programming errors:
- Identify solutions to lower setup costs: With customer product designs getting more complex, costs are growing from complicated, time-consuming setups on press brakes. Reducing the time needed to set up and maintain efficient production should be a key driving factor for decision making.
- Invest in clamping systems: A clamping system replaces the need to tighten set screws manually, reducing setup time. Options range from high-speed power clamping to quick-change manual clamping systems.
- Use Offline programming with high-end retrofit controls: If your operators make too many mistakes programming at the machine, you may benefit from investing in higher-end systems that allow for offline programming capabilities. With today’s advanced control systems, engineers can pre-program a job from their computers. He or she can determine the tooling to use, the bend sequence, and even simulate the production. The job can then be sent to the press brake control operator to open and run. This process eliminates mistakes from programming at the machine and ensures that the bend sequence is optimized.
- Consider a press brake retrofit: A press brake retrofit is a cost-effective approach to lowering setup time by increasing the productivity of an existing, properly functioning press brake. This approach includes retrofitting your press brake with features that can help reduce setup time. These upgrades can include:
- Upgrade Ram Accuracy
- Replace Pedestal Controller
- Upgrade or replace the backgauge or front gauge
- Upgrade or replace your CNC controls
- Consider a press brake retrofit: A press brake retrofit is a cost-effective approach to lowering setup time by increasing the productivity of an existing, properly functioning press brake. This approach includes retrofitting your press brake with features that can help reduce setup time. These upgrades can include:
Improve press brake operations including productivity and precision with a new CNC Press Brake controller
Today’s new innovative press brake CNC controllers are the key to improving productivity and achieving customer satisfaction. There are many controllers on the market. Automec has introduced one that combines affordability with all the great features one would expect from a state-of-the-art press brake controller, the Automec Fasfold.
The Automec Fasfold features easy to use quickdraw, real-time 3D, and 2D programming of parts.
Automec Fasfold Controller features quickdraw and 3D simulation and an innovative touch screen programming interface. The Automec Fasfold Controller has all the innovative features you have come to expect from a press brake controller, such as:
What do you do if your Press Brake Controller fails to work?
Would it be a game-changer if you could fix your press brake control system in minutes?
Introducing the Automec Fasfold Dual Redundancy Package
It is hard to imagine how Automec customers can experience even more benefits, but the Fasfold Dual Redundancy Package has done just that.
While the Automec Fasfold controller’s touchscreen interface with Quickdraw and 3D simulation constantly saves you money through convenience and design, the Dual Redundancy Package saves you money through predictability. You’ll never worry that a mechanical or electronic problem will cause your production to halt for days or weeks because you’ll be able to get your press brake back up and running in a matter of minutes.
How much money will you save?
When your press brake goes down, the upfront costs are the least of your worries; with the bottleneck caused by the red time and the technician not fixing your press brake for days or even weeks, your production halts. This halt in work time will cost you tens of thousands of dollars before your press brake is back up and running. The Dual Redundancy Package makes this headache a problem of the past.
How the Dual Redundancy Package works
In the Dual Redundancy Package, you get all the critical components needed to ‘hot swap’ parts: 1 spare windows laptop that can run the machine, programmed PLC, Servo motor, servo drive, amplifier, and linear encoder. As a result, you can replace Automec Fasfold parts quickly on a plug & play basis.
A quick swop-over will come into play when your press brake goes down. You can quickly install any of the pre-programmed components, and you are back in production in minutes! Additionally, we also replace the faulty part for a $1500 flat rate.
Get troubleshooting tools and support when you need them.
The Automec Fasfold Dual Redundancy Package comes with a suite of diagnostics and support tools to help you make the most out of the package’s features. The package comes with it a rapid diagnostics suite and a resourceful online support system so that you can immediately see where the problem is with your press brake. In addition, a network of skilled technicians having with years of experience diagnosing problems can log on to your controller via Teamviewer and perform training and perform diagnostics on your press brake setup.
Investing in an Automec Fasfold Controller and dual redundancy package means you’ll lower the red time on your press brake to more manageable levels resulting in more overall profitability.
Learn more about the Automec Fasfold Controller by watching the video below.
See if the Automec Fasfold Controller or a press brake retrofit is a good fit for your business
Contact an Automec team member at (781) 893-3403 and we can help you control costs, improve productivity, and ensure quality output for your press brake operations.