Elizabeth Kautzmann, chairman of FMA’s Industrial Laser Council, keeps one eye on laser technology and another eye on a part’s overall processing time.

METAL LLC of Ann Arbor, Mich., is not your typical custom fab shop. Along with taking on architectural fabrication jobs, the company also handles restoration of antique and contemporary vehicles, performs product research and design, and fabricates custom sculptural projects. If that weren't enough, METAL has plans to release its own line of custom tables and routinely opens its doors to the public for art showings and as a musical venue, truly pushing itself to the forefront of the Ann Arbor arts and entertainment scene.

Press brake manufacturers have responded to industry’s need to produce small batches of parts that require frequent tooling changes by designing options and systems to reduce setup time by managing, storing, and automatically changing upper and lower tools. Operators can spend less time physically involved with setup and more time with the profit-making bending process. Reduced margin for error and less scrap are added benefits. However, there are steps that can be taken to reduce setup time without investing in new press brake equipment.

A high-product-mix manufacturer chooses robotized bending not because it lacked a skilled workforce, but because it wanted to make the best use of the talented workforce it already had.

Hot forming entails heating and rapidly cooling the workpiece. However, the extraordinarily high-strength material emerging from the press makes cutting and trimming with hard dies impractical, even infeasible. This is where the multiaxis laser finds its niche.

When a robotic manufacturing system needs to be moved, particularly between remote sites, the cost of the move can be a significant percentage of the original cost of the system. But this doesn’t always have to be the case.

In this third installment of Columnist Gerald Davis' series on job estimating, he describes why an estimator cares how well a project fits the capabilities of the shop.

Everyone has personal problems at some point of their lives, and those problems can affect productivity at work. In this sensitive area, workplace chaplains may be able to help.

Various factors drive company valuation, and one of the most significant is the market characteristics--that is, a company’s sources of revenue and the total available revenue within the company’s reach.