When Dan Joss of Wallace Machinery suggested Hi-Tec Profiles, a custom job shop in Regina, SK, try Wila’s new line of Standard Tooling for a new Accupress 840 ton press brake, Ed Vansteelandt, press brake foreman was skeptical. With 14 years of experience on press brakes, Vansteelandt had been exposed to several types of press brake tooling, including nitride-coated tooling and he had found them all lacking. “We have 15 people in the pressbrake department working on two shifts, an eight-hour morning shift and a tenhour afternoon shift and we’re forming products 80 hours a week using seven press brakes. Initially we worked with coated tooling and we found it was forming better until the coating wore off and then we got tool wear.” Six months ago, Hi-Tec Profiles purchased a new Accupress 840 ton press brake equipped with a Wila New Standard hydraulic clamping system and tooling. “What really turned the guys’ heads around was how easily the tooling bent 316 steel. We were bending three feet of 316 and coining it and the tooling at the time couldn’t bend the material to the 90° bend we needed. With the new Wila tooling, it was so easy to bend and we were able to bend it in lengths up to six feet, using a third of the tonnage because of air bending, made possible by the Wila tooling. So it’s easier on the press brake and you get less wear and tear because you’re not putting the full amount of tonnage on it.” Perhaps more importantly, after six months of high use, Vansteel and hasn’t seen any wear, “not even a scratch.” In fact, Vansteelandt and his team are so impressed with the performance of the tooling, they plan to replace their entire stock of bending tools with the new Wila tools, including specialty made tools. “I don’t see an end to the purchasing of tooling for our press brakes because now we’re looking at job specific tooling. Wila recently made specialty tooling to help us with a customer part that has allowed us to eliminate one of the hits and one of the flips we used to have to make with the old tooling. “We’ve gone from this job taking eight hours to about five to five and a half hours, so we’re saving time and improving our efficiencies.” Hi-Tec Profiles was formed in 1988. Its fabrication shop is equipped with eight laser cutting machines capable of cutting from 0.56 to 25.4 mm (24 gauge up to 1 in.), a torch plasma cutter that cuts material up to 127 mm (5 in.) and seven press brakes from 65 ton up to 840 ton.
Reprinted with permission from Shop Metalworking Technology/ www.shopmetaltech.com
WILA testimonial Hi-Tec Profiles
