Investment in a new high-speed press is set
to help a Birmingham metal stamping specialist capitalise on 20% growth over
the last twelve months.
Brandauer, which recently secured a Queen’s
Award for International Trade, has spent £600,000 on a Yamada Dobby NXT 80XL as
part of a three-year plan to boost its capacity and provide additional
production flexibility.
The state-of-the-art technology gives it patented repeatability on quality and a 100% reduction in press setting time that frees up manufacturing space to take on new contract wins in the plumbing sector, automotive motor laminations and fuel cells.
It is the first machine it has purchased from
the Japanese-based press specialist and it tops off a £2m modernisation of its
Birmingham facility that has also included a new GF wire cut EDM machine, 2 Andmar
surface grinders and an OGP Smartscope Vantage 250 to help with quality
inspection.
Don Walters, Operations Manager at Brandauer,
commented: “We first came across the press at Blechexpo and were impressed with
what we saw in terms of its speed, the repeatable quality and how user friendly
it appeared.”
He continued: “Our visit to its showroom in
Italy gave us the chance to see the Yamada in all of its glory and we worked
with its experts to configure the machine so it delivers the accuracy and
performance we were looking to achieve.”
Established in 1862, Brandauer is one of the
West Midlands best kept manufacturing secrets, producing millions of high
tolerance metal pressings and stampings every week for customers in the
plumbing, automotive, domestic products, electrical, medical and renewables
sectors.
It took just 9 months from the order being
placed for the Yamada NXT 80XL press to be installed and commissioned, with the
machine now working on components that use material ranging in thickness from
0.2 to 0.8mm.
The 1.5m metre bed is the largest the company
currently has available and it can operate at speeds of between 100 and 800
strokes per minute.
Karl Jeavons, Press Shop Team Leader at
Brandauer, went on to add: “The quality is second to none and we run off thousands
and thousands of parts every day, thanks in part to the double link motion
mechanism that delivers Yamada’s patented repeatability, whilst also helping to
prolong the life of the tool.
“What has really impressed us is how easy the
press is to set-up and use, reducing the set-up time in some instances from 3.5
hours to 6 minutes. This is due to the simple user interface, which is capable
of storing up to 1000 different set-ups. Once the initial setting work is done
a semi-skilled setter can take over for all future runs of the same product.
“This massively frees up resource, giving us
the ability to move our engineers on to different projects so that we can run
jobs simultaneously.”
He concluded: “Other benefits that the Yamada
delivers, includes proven low maintenance, excellent standard-fit equipment and
SMED and Industry 4.0 capabilities to futureproof the press going forward.”
Building
on the first installation, Brandauer’s world class manufacturing environment
has been assigned as a technology showcase partner for Yamada Dobby, with a
number of open houses planned for later in the year.
Interesting in seeing the Yamada NXT 80-XL?
Use the form below to express your interest in visiting Brandauer’s world-class facility and the capabilities of the Yamada NXT 80-XL.