STAMPING Journal wins ASBPE Award

STAMPING Journal®, published by FMA Communications Inc., Elgin, Ill., has received a Regional Bronze Award from the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE) for its article, “Presses help form new future, fortune for tool- and diemaker,” Kate Bachman, editor, and Amy Nickel, copy editor.

The article, which appeared in the May/June 2017 issue, features Miro Mfg., a stamping manufacturer with tool- and diemaker roots based in Waukesha, Wis. When Jeff Brown, company president, sized up the state of the industry in 2001 and then again in 2008, he made a pivotal decision to buy big presses and move into stamping production, but retain the company’s tool- and diemaking DNA. The article highlights how that decision turned out to be a sound one.

Prog die strips and parts made by single-hit dies line nearly all of the walls of all four of Miro’s buildings. Hieroglyphic-like, they tell a narrative of the type of work the company has done, progressively, and how it has expanded and evolved over the years. The first strips, beginning in a corner of what was originally a 4,000-square-foot building—now a 25,000-sq.-ft. building—are small copper and brass stampings, made primarily on small, low-tonnage, one-out tryout presses to test their manufacturability in what was, in 1988, a small tool and die shop. As the stampings make their way along the wall, they grow bigger and more complex, the materials more varied, and transition from impressions for tryout dies to production stampings for assemblies.“They really tell the story of our company,” said Miro Manufacturing President Jeff Brown.

Founded in 1964, the American Society of Business Publication Editors is the professional association for full-time and freelance editors and writers employed in the business, trade, and specialty press. ASBPE is widely known for its annual Awards of Excellence competition, which recognizes the best in editorial, design, and online achievement.