Applications: Electric press brakes set the pace for lighting products manufacturer

Situation:

Kenall Mfg. is a manufacturer of energy-efficient lighting products for challenging environments. In late 2014 the company moved its production and office operations from Gurnee, Ill., to Kenosha, Wis., while also reducing its fabrication operation from three shifts to two.

Continued and expected growth in business made the company realize it needed to create additional fabrication capacity to address its forming requirements in one less shift.

Resolution:

Kenall decided to purchase five new E-brake electric press brakes from SafanDarley to help increase productivity. The brakes set the pace for the company’s flexible linear cell environment, called fabrication tracks, which begin with forming. Once formed on the brakes, the parts move through the tracks for welding, hardware insertion, and spot welding until they are complete for the next department.

Kenall’s previous press brakes didn’t have safety guarding, so the purchase of these new brakes—which feature integrated light guard technology—eliminated the need to retrofit light curtains to the old machines.

“The patented light curtain system requires zero setup when going from job to job,” said Mauricio Gutierrez Matta of SafanDarley. “And it is the only light curtain system in the world that can detect a safe condition and, through the CNC, allow for ram travel to occur automatically.”

Some employees who were seasoned on the old press brakes had reservations about the new machines, and the new brakes required a learning curve because of new controls, but the transition went smoothly. Offline programming from the previous press brakes continues on the new machines. Maintenance is minimal, primarily involving some greasing of fittings. Hydraulic oil changes have been eliminated. And most important, forming quality has remained high.

Currently about 90 percent of the company’s products are formed on the electric press brakes. It moved one of the old press brakes to the new fabrication track to allow flexibility for the 10 percent of jobs not run on the electric brakes.