Coldwater Machine Company, a Lincoln Electric Company, has recently shipped a flexible wrapper and control panel fabrication line to Texas for the fabrication of 14 different sizes of air conditioning units. Based upon customer specification, Coldwater was the designated integrator responsible for coordinating the coil processing equipment and the mechanical press and tooling suppliers, as well as for the quick die change, post-mechanical press operations and the master controls of the entire line.
The process begins with feeding of the coil stock to a 400-ton mechanical press featuring two automated gag dies that transition to accommodate different-sized panels. The coil is fed into the press in variable increments as the louvers are stamped into the materials.
Once the louvers are stamped, the material is indexed out of the press, sheared and transferred to the Bead and Toggle station, comprised of two side-by-side 40-ton servo hydraulic presses that stamp that part at the same time.
From there, the material goes into the Final Form station, which also features two 40-ton hydraulic presses for bending the panels. The Final Form presses each have their own linear encoder tracking the position of the press to ensure the two presses are in the exact same position. A robot then reaches in to pull out the part and place it on a conveyor.
Based upon the controls logic, the system knows where to position the part for each of the various part runs. Any part changeover is entirely seamless based upon the stored part recipe.
The material being processed is .029-inch thick CRS and the same for all 14 parts with die change at the louver press being accomplished in under five minutes.
