Does automation dumb-down the shop floor?

Can modern machines dumb-down the shop floor? It’s a real possibility. But if metal fab shops take the right approach, modern tech can do just the opposite. Getty Images

Several years ago I spoke with an oxyfuel cutting expert who described the latest controls and how many previously manual steps in the setup process had been automated. He and I got to talking, and he asked what was behind metal fabrication’s push toward automation. Was it about productivity, the lack of skilled labor, or both?

I told him I thought it was a bit of both, but also that I felt that productivity was the driving force. I recalled an incredibly complicated press brake setup I witnessed at a Georgia fab shop, where the operator formed a workpiece across a multitude of toolsets staged across the press brake bed. The department supervisor told me that, yes, their press brake lead could have developed such a setup, but considering the part’s low volume, he probably wouldn’t have bothered. It would have taken far too long. After using offline bend simulation software, the story changed. With the software developing the setup, the operator simply performed a few tryout bends and he was good to go.

One more thing: That lead press brake operator happened to be retiring soon. On its own, his retirement was nothing unusual. After all, the metal fabrication industry, along with the rest of the U.S. economy, continues to undergo a generational shift as the boomer generation leaves the workforce. Still, the transition revealed some unsettling realities. Is knowledge walking out the door?

I had a similar feeling visiting another shop where I watched an expert punch programmer dial in a static nest, utilizing material under the clamps with repositioning routines, sequencing it just right to minimize distortion and maintain skeletal integrity throughout the punching cycle. He walked me through it step by step, how he planned for a certain tab-breakaway strategy, and how he looked not just at the part profile, but the tabs holding it in place and its orientation and placement on the sheet. And for tabs that wouldn’t be removed in deburring, he knew to avoid them on edges that would slide up against the press brake backgauge. He saw punch and laser programming as a central piece of a much larger puzzle, and he reveled in the solving of it. He’s retired now.

Today’s software automation has eliminated some mind-numbing work—few would welcome the extreme tediousness of tape-fed controllers—but it has made some intriguing work, like the tuning in of a static nest or perfecting a staged bending setup, less cost-effective. Software can do a good enough job, sometimes a better job.

So, why do fabricators invest in automation? Typically, people say it’s to increase competitiveness and to make the best use of the skilled people they have. Then there’s the less politically correct answer: Automation doesn’t call in sick.

Some have told me they hesitate to automate because they fear the latest machines with all the bells and whistles will dumb-down the shop floor. Setting up a press brake manually might be inefficient, but it allows novices to learn by doing. If they never position a punch or a die on their own, the argument goes, they’ll never learn how to truly operate a press brake.

That’s a real possibility. Years ago novices operating the “less smart” equipment of the day wouldn’t go far if they didn’t learn by doing. Today a novice press brake operator can look at a 3D animation on the control, follow the lights above the punches or moving foot pedal, and produce good parts. The fact that disengaged button-pushers even can produce good parts brings about that fear of a dumbed-down shop.

Even so, I’d argue that people can continue to learn, just differently than previous generations did. Seeing software simulation in action (looking a little like the video games of their youth), they’ll learn to think broadly right from the start: the fact that a formed part is a culmination not just of a blank geometry, material grade, and thickness, but of press brake tooling, its arrangement across the bed, and how it works in concert with the backgauge. In punching and laser cutting, they might even recognize the importance of a blank's orientation and placement on a nest—microtabs, lead-ins, and all.

Far from dumbing-down the shop, automation in this scenario helps lift up the next generation to new levels of productivity. The trick will be recruiting curious people who look at new technology and don’t see a monotonous job. They instead see the bigger picture and all the possibilities that technology brings.