Three LVD press brakes at Bridlington-based BW Industries have improved production efficiencies and accuracy on parts ranging from small brackets and cleats up to 9m-long structural beams.
The steel processing specialist has invested in two LVD 4.5m 320t Easy-Form press brakes that can work together as a tandem machine to form components up to 9m long and 8mm thick. It has also installed a fast, compact, electric-drive Dyna-Press to give it more productivity on smaller components.
The company was formed around 45-years ago and is run by Managing Director Gareth Rounding and Director of Operations and Sales Neil Pilling. The two have been with the company for 25 years, buying a stake in the business in 2004 and completing a management buyout in 2016.
The company now has around 150 employees and turns over £25m – which has increased by £7m in the last three years.
BW is unusual in having both press brakes and roll forming lines, as well as lasers and fabrication facilities.
Neil Pilling says: “We do anything to do with steel products – pressed, rolled, laser cut, assembled, painted – we are a one-stop steel shop processing around 25,000 tonnes of steel a year.”
Many of BW’s customers are in the construction sector, where the offsite construction of modular buildings is a strong and growing area. On the laser and press braking side it also supplies customers in commercial vehicle building, motorway signage, crane booms and shipping containers.
BW Industries recently uprated its EC certification of conformity and can now supply fabricated structural steel purlins, mezzanine steel channels, engineered wall panels and fabricated structural steel assemblies up to Execution Class 3 in accordance with BS EN 1090.
Gareth Rounding says that the move to offsite construction is significant, as the use of pre-fabricated modules produced in factory conditions gives major time and cost savings on site and ensures high levels of accuracy and quality.
Here BW’s flexibility comes into play, allowing it to offer customers either a kit of parts including beams and cleats; fabricated floor and ceiling cassettes that can be simply bolted or welded together on site; or complete fabricated cubes that could be used for anything from a drive-through Starbucks, to a school classroom, a multi-storey office building or even a hotel.
Gareth says: “When you look at a Travelodge you wouldn’t know it was an offsite construction. The only thing that you might notice was that the bricks were too straight!”
He adds that, whatever the customer, the main concerns are quality, accuracy, short lead times and competitive prices.
The decision to invest in new bending capacity came initially from a desire to replace some older machines that were becoming difficult to support with spares and service, but it also gave them the opportunity to bring BW’s bending facilities up to the latest level of technology.
Neil Pilling says: “We wanted new machines that were current in terms of spare parts, maintenance and service, but above all we wanted to get that next step on in technology. It is about efficiency and quality. For us quality is paramount and that is what the LVD machines ensure. We wanted to give the guys on the factory floor the tools to do the job so we could reap the rewards and benefits.”
Gareth adds: “Previously we only had a 7.3m press brake, whereas our laser capacity was 9m, so we decided on two independent 4.5m machines that could run in tandem to complement the laser.”
He says that one of the advantages of LVD press brakes is that the design of the frame means LVD can build machines up to and beyond the size of the two machines at BW without the need to dig a pit for the foundations.
The key benefits of the machines for BW are their accuracy, speed of setup and the flexibility of having either two 4.5m 320t machines or one 9m 640t machine. It is effectively three machines in one, with a minimal changeover time to move to tandem operation.
Neil Pilling says that the accuracy over 9m on the first test part was 0.3mm and that the machines give a consistently accurate bend on every component.
This is due to the Easy-Form angle monitoring systems, automatic crowning and precise control of the Y1 and Y2 axes on each of the two machines all working together.
The type of parts produced by BW generally have fairly simple geometries and so they are very straightforward to program at the machine rather than using an offline programming system.
Neil says: “It is a very user-friendly interface and setups are very quick”. He adds that the hydraulic tool clamping system helps speed setups too.
“For the new machines we purchased 200m long top and bottom tooling which is hydraulically clamped by the machine. Changing tooling is now a one-man job, whereas before we were using 4 and 6m long tooling which had to be craned into place by two people. The setup time comes down dramatically.”
The tandem press is also fitted with four CNC sheet followers that support the material during bending – two on each machine – which can each support 250kg at a given distance from the beam.
Says Neil, “If you are bending a 9m beam you need to be able to support it for health and safety reasons alone.”
The tandem machine was not BW’s first new press brake though: it also recently invested in an LVD Dyna-Press machine. This is a small, fast and accurate bending machine with an electric drive system that is ideal for bending small parts and very easy to use.
Neil Pilling explains: “We were doing a lot of small parts on our big press brakes that were taking up capacity and wearing out the centre of the bed. So we looked for a machine that would be suitable for doing all the cleats, etc, for our joists. It is very efficient and has certainly upped the ante on our production efficiency and capacity. It is very versatile and, because it is so easy to use, we have the flexibility that we can put someone on it during the night shift as well if we need to.”
The investment in the LVD machines is already paying off in terms of new business. Neil says: “We took on a dedicated salesperson to sell the 9m laser and press brake capacity six months before the press brake was installed so that we could hit the ground running. It has brought in a lot of orders that we couldn’t have done before.”