Customer Problem | Pain Point:
A customer within the Water industry reached out to Proto-1 for a solution. They wanted to produce copper tees and elbows stateside for plumbing systems for their global customer base. At the time, they lacked the machinery necessary to produce the large quantities that they needed to keep up with demand.
Engineering A Solution:
In order to properly form a copper tee or elbow, the product must go through a few processes. The first process required RAM machine to pre-bead the copper elbow or tee. Since the customer needed flexibility to form different styles of parts, Proto-1 designed a custom 3 headed RAM machine to accommodate for both the tees and 90° elbows. Different sets of tooling were engineered and designed for a wide range of product diameters.
Final Tube Forming Solution Delivered to Customer:
In the end, Proto-1 provided the customer with a custom 3-headed RAM. When the product was loaded in the die, 3 different ram shuttles with tooling noses (2 if it was an elbow) would move in to ram end form each bead. This process proved to have a quick cycle time under 8 seconds. Because of the quick cycle time, the customer was able to meet their throughput requirements to meet their high quantities.
