Customer Issue | Pain Point:
Copper is widely used throughout the Water industry to transfer water through buildings and infrastructure. A customer that specializes in copper valves and fittings for the Water industry approached Proto-1 in need of a solution. The customer was currently outsourcing the entire process for a specific copper fitting to overseas companies and they wanted to bring the process in-house to boost efficiencies and product delivery for their markets stateside.
Engineering a Solution:
For this project, Proto-1’s engineering team designed a custom ram machine as the basis for their tube end forming solution. The customer’s final product required multiple operations that would need to be incorporated into the machine. To start, the raw copper fitting, which came in multiple orientations such as 90° & 45° elbows & straight tees, needed to expanded up on all ends. Secondly, the ends would then have to be trimmed to length. In the past, the customer was using a facing method to reduce the ends to length while maintaining perpendicularity with the tee or elbow. This method was effective but it was extremely wasteful in terms of recycling scrap material. The facer would produce scrap material in the form of shavings that would hardly warrant any material when the copper was meltdown again for recycling. Proto-1 incorporated our ram end forming pinch trim technology to trim the ends of the tees and elbows while keeping the ends square. This operation also produced a large piece of scrap material that could be used for recycling. Automation was added to increase efficiency and product output.
Final Tube Forming Solution Delivered to Customer:
The final result was a custom 3 headed ram machine that had 3 ram shuttles with two hits per shuttle. Both of the operations needed to complete the product were incorporated into the ram end forming tooling. The first hit would expand while the second completed the pinch trimming. To change the orientation of the product being made, the tooling just had to be changed out. Once a different set of dies and hits were loaded, a new variation of the product could be produced. A robot continuously fed the machine, eliminating an operator in the working area which increased safety. Due to the increased output and the added ability to recycle scrap material, the customer was able to not only in-source their product but also meet demand and save costs. Numerous other projects were spawned because of the success of this project; giving way to new variants of the 3 headed ram for various products lines that the customer required.
