Why veteran press brake operators are invaluable to a metal fab shop

Why veteran press brake operators are such valuable contributors to a metal fabricating company’s success and how the metal bending department has changed over the years. Getty Images

Knowledgeable press brake operators are worth their weight in gold.

While manufacturing companies and job shops continue to be on the lookout for welders, they at least know that a local vocational training institution is turning out new job candidates. The same can’t be said for press brake operators.

That’s one of the reasons that the industry has seen so much of a move toward automated tool-changing devices and robotic press brake cells in recent years. While human press brake operators provide the flexibility that any automated equipment would be hard to match, those humans are frequently all too hard to find.

What about those press brake operators still at it? They’ve seen a lot. The older ones learned with the help of drafting paper, bending tables, and rulers. The not-as-old operators likely have a foot in that world and one in the world of computer controls and laser angle verification on the formed part. The newbies in front of the press brake likely know only what training is provided to them, either by an in-house mentor or maybe a technical representative from the brake’s manufacturer.

To find out how a press brake team might be functioning in today’s fast-paced metal fabricating world, The FABRICATOR had a conversation with Jim Baer, Jim Baer Jr., and Steve Thompson of ATECH-SEH Metal Fabricators in Buffalo, N.Y. The trio handle a majority of the bending work for the job shop and its sister company, Deronde Doors and Frames, a metal door and frame manufacturer that the company’s owners, Grace and David Munschauer, bought in 2008.

Baer and Thompson joined the company in 1987 and 1988, respectively. Baer Jr. came onboard in 2008. All credit former plant manager Andy Balling, who retired recently, with helping them hone their metal forming knowledge not only in the early days of their careers, but also whenever complex jobs appeared and they needed another point of view.

The following is an edited transcript of the conversation.

The FABRICATOR: Did you go to school to learn about sheet metal fabrication?

Steve Thompson: Yeah, [Jim Baer and I] went to school for it. That was back in the late ’80s and early ’90s. So, things were still pretty old-school back then. We went to classes during the day and then night school. We learned about metallurgy, welding, blueprint reading, drafting, and things like that.

Now Jim Sr. and I are basically hands-on. We’re not in engineering, and we don’t run AutoCAD. But we do help the engineers by letting them know what’s happening on the floor. It’s all about the press brakes and making sure the parts are formed correctly.

FAB: When did you realize that you might want to work with press brakes, Jim Jr.?

Jim Baer Jr.: Originally, I was just doing spot welding, running a saw, and working with other machines. One day my dad and Steve started showing me stuff on the press brakes, and I started setting them up. Then I went on from there to the newer press brakes, and I’ve been doing it ever since.

(From left to right) Jim Baer, Jim Baer Jr., and Steve Thompson handle a majority of the bending work for ATECH-SEH Metal Fabricators. They say that even though press brake technology continues to get better with each passing year, a skilled operator still has a large impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of a company’s bending department.

FAB: Can you describe the bending department at the shop? What kind of equipment do you have?

Jim Baer: Today we have five CNC press brakes with four having all the bells and whistles. We still have four old mechanical press brakes that we do a lot of the old stuff on. That’s for the old-school type of setups and stuff that you really can’t do on the newer machines, like small bends and radius bends that are unorthodox and require our old tooling. We could do these jobs on the new press brakes, but we don’t do enough of the work for it to be cost-effective. We would have to buy special tooling for the newer machines.

FAB: Do the older brakes have permanent or semipermanent setups, or do you change out the tooling frequently?

Baer: It’s switched out all the time because of the many types of material that we work with, going down to like 0.015- all the way up to 0.25-in. material. Changeover is constant.

FAB: Do you have press brakes from different manufacturers?

Baer: For the new CNC press brakes, we have two LVDs and two Bystronics. We also have an older LVD CNC press brake model, which is the one that I work on because that’s what Steve and I were trained on when the CNC press brakes came out. That was in the early 1990s. We thought that was state-of-the-art at the time, but it’s nothing compared to today’s technology.

For the mechanical brakes, we have a couple of Wysongs, a Niagara, and a Di-Acro.

FAB: How would you characterize the way you bent parts then to the way you bend them now?

Baer: It seems so archaic. Back then we used the adjustable squares, and we had to lay out things in the flat, for example. That was back in the late 1980s.

Thompson: So, when we started, we had things like windout backgauges and stuff like that. Then in the early ’90s, we got the Hurco backgauges. When that came out, Jim Sr. and I thought that was the cat’s pajamas. That was a big thing for us. We were excited to do something like setting the dimensions up.

Now we have the new technology that’s out. Jim Sr. and I are old-school, but we kind of like the new stuff now.

FAB: How has the transition been over the years to using these new press brakes?

Baer: It’s been a little bit intimidating for Steve and me. Not so much for my son. He grasped it relatively easily. We’re kind of stuck in our old way, but we’ve adapted. We were definitely intimidated by the newer technology, but we took hold of it. It’s pretty easy for us now.

FAB: What was the most intimidating thing for you with the new technology?

Baer: It was the computer stuff and all of the icons that we aren’t too savvy on. The younger generation can grasp it a lot quicker because they are used to it.

FAB: Jim Jr., what do you think about when you hear how things were in the late 1980s and early 1990s? Can you wrap your head around it?

Baer Jr.: No, I can’t, really. They did show me how to work with the automatic backgauges on the mechanical press brakes, and that’s where I learned how to set up. Working on those press brakes, you also learned how to enter your own dimensions and make your own programs.

Now the new press brakes are all programmed offline. When you get a program, you pull it up, and the dimensions are there already, so the backgauge knows where to go. You have to make some adjustments, but they are minimal.

FAB: Do you think working on the old press brakes helps you have a better understanding of the bending process and working on the newer brakes?

Baer Jr.: Yes. It just made it easier for me to be able to pick up a part and do it on the new machine. I was familiar with measuring and the steps needed to bend the part. I didn't come off the street and just start doing it. That would have been harder probably.

FAB: Is training on older press brakes a good way for new press brake operators to learn the job?

Baer: I think they need to know the fundamentals, the whole way metal works and the way it bends. Even though with the new technology you can put the tools in and go, you really need to know the reason why things happen, the cause and effect of everything.

The newer guys can grasp the technology really easily as far as the operations of their controls, but they just don’t know the reason why the metal bends the way it does and why you have to do things a certain way, like when you are working with stainless steel versus working with aluminum, where springback is going to be a lot different.

Thompson: And even though we have this new technology, the press brakes don’t always break the part exactly the way it should be broken. We change a lot of things along the road. It’s not a perfect science.

Sometimes the programmers will hit automatic as far as making the program, and it’s really not the most effective way to do things. So we have to switch that around a lot.

Baer: We can look at the program before we even bend our part, and we know how it’s going to go. Other times, we do consult with the engineers and sometimes help them to understand what the metal is going to do in the press brake.

FAB: Are you to the point where you can produce that first part and feel confident that it’s a good part?

Thompson: That’s the goal, and it usually happens.

Baer: It’s a lot better than back in the old days when we used to have to get a little test piece and make sure the plan worked. It might take close to an hour to do that, depending on the degree of difficulty. Also, with the old-school way, you would have a part that you might have to set up three different times just to create what you can do on these newer machines with one setup. The old tools were so limited on their angles. You only could do like 90-degree bends at one time, and then you had to switch it back over to another tool to create another angle and also change your ram setting for the different tools. But with the newer machines, you can walk the beam, so to speak.

FAB: During your careers, what’s been the biggest change in terms of press brake technology?

Thompson: The tooling is so much easier and nicer to work with. That makes a big difference.

Baer: The controls make a big difference on the newer machines. What we’ve been doing lately is converting some of the older jobs that may have taken multiple setups and putting them into the new machines. The difference is like day and night. It really works out well. You might need to adjust your blank size moving forward, but you can just tell the engineer who can then fire out another blank for you moving forward. That’s it.

Baer Jr.: It’s nice to be able to know how to do stuff on the old machines, but also work on the new ones. I can make programs on those older machines, and I can do the bend deduction tests to tell the machine what bend to actually use. It’s really like riding a bike. You don’t forget.

FAB: What is the most challenging part of your job on an average day?

Thompson: It’s probably adjusting to the programs that we don’t like and that need to be changed. If something is not right, that’s the biggest challenge.

Baer: Steve and I know when something doesn’t look right. We can look at a blueprint and flatten it out mathematically, just like the computer does.

Sometimes the computer doesn’t do everything the way it’s supposed to. Steve and I can see that and tell if something needs to change. It could be in the way that it’s modeled or the way the engineer gets the drawing from the customer. It’s not always done in the way that we’re going to do it down here on the floor.

Thompson: I can give you an example. Say we have this one part that requires a 90-degree break. One dimension might be 1 in. long, and the other dimension might be 7 in. long. What the computer program will want to do is bend the 7-in. break, and you are left holding this little part on the other end. It just doesn’t make sense. For some reason, the software doesn’t think like us.

FAB: What do you find to be the most rewarding part of your job?

Baer: I think for me it’s completing a very challenging job. It’s just something that may have taken a lot of thought. Maybe a part with 15 or 16 bends. Now once you produce a good part, the catch is then you might have to do 100 of that same part.

Thompson: It’s when we get something new. The older stuff we know like the back of our hands, but when we get something new or when the sales guy comes back to us and asks if we can make this part, that’s exciting. It might have those 15 or 16 bends or something special like bump radiuses. That type of work is exciting to me.

When that part comes out, looks great, and is dimensionally OK, I get stoked about that.

Baer Jr.: I have to agree with the other guys. I get a little freaked out sometimes when I get a part that’s crazy like that, but it always ends up good for me in the end. I freak out for nothing.

FAB: What do you think are the most important characteristics for press brake operators to have?

Baer: They need to be patient and pay attention to the details because some jobs are hard and some jobs are easy. I don’t think they can get discouraged easily because we’ve all failed numerous times when we were coming up.

But once you get that vision of what a part’s going to look like when you see a flat part and you can anticipate what it’s going to look like before you even make it, you know you’re ready for anything coming your way.

Thompson: For me, it’s about learning, like I do from these guys. I know that it sounds crazy, but sometimes new employees come into the shop and they don’t know the difference between steel and aluminum. For us, we can look at a sheet and tell whether it’s 0.080-in. or 0.090-in. sheet. New people need to learn the basics. We try to get them to learn that stuff upfront. They have to want to learn.

Baer Jr.: You have to pay attention to everything and go over all your paperwork. Stay calm and focused. And 99% of the time you’ll be successful. When I start losing my train of thought, I mess things up.

For me, it helps to talk with the others. So, we talk a lot, and we all have similar issues sometimes. And if one person can’t solve it, the other one can.

FAB: If the present-day version of yourself could go back and give advice to your younger self just starting out in front of a press brake, what would he say?

Thompson: Write more stuff down! For some reason when I was young, I’d try to keep it all in my head. Even with the newer technology, Jim Jr. will tell me, “Write it down, Steve. Write it down.” There’s still a lot to learn to be able to do the jobs on the new brakes. I would say to myself, pay attention and write stuff down more.

Baer: I agree with Steve. But it should be pointed out that some of our notes from the past now look like the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Baer Jr.: I would tell myself to stay focused and keep your eyes forward. Keep pressing on. That's what I did, and it’s worked out.