Dan Partin

http://www.thefabricator.com/PressFeeding/PressFeeding Article.cfm?ID=802 Most of the parts are stamped out of light-gauge metals. “On the majority of our machines, we’re feeding 0.0040 inch and less,” said Dan Partin, senior process engineer at Whirlpool.Partin reported that the company had noticed excessive downtime on some of its key presses that were running for three shifts. “That’s what first alerted me to the fact that there was a problem on the floor,” he said. “We went in and said, sociate Editor Tue, 13 Jan 2004 12:00:00 AM CST

"On the majority of our machines, we're feeding 0.0040 inch and less," said Dan Partin, senior process engineer at Whirlpool.

Partin reported that the company had noticed excessive downtime on some of its key presses that were running for three shifts."That's what first alerted me to the fact that there was a problem on the floor," he said.
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Partin said he analyzed the downtime incidents to isolate which part of the process was causing the problems."Either it's a press, which is an electrical or mechanical maintenance issue, a die issue, a material issue, or a feeding issue.After we looked at a couple of months' worth of data, it was obvious that the press feed caused the majority of our problems."

Partin said that the older feeders the company had been using did not have the adjustability to deliver feed accuracy.
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Partin added that their feed system did not have enough options on it.
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Partin said that once he made the decision to purchase a new style of feeding equipment, he began to define what the company needed from the new equipment and what was not necessary.
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"And of course I had Whirlpool standards to comply with," Partin said.
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"The Rowe machine was rugged enough to do the job that we wanted it to do, but also it was flexible," Partin said.

He said that the new feeding equipment was suitable for the thickness range they needed.
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Now's the time to do it,'" Partin said.

Partin said the interface "brought a lot of things to the table," including parameters that can be set and controlled to speed up throughput.
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Partin reported that downtime has been reduced because the machines are no longer jamming.In addition, the new feed equipment and controls have made the operation simpler and have reduced setup time."Now it is just pushing a button and running a small test.It's easy to use," Partin said.

"And the flexibility it added-in the past we had to stop the machine, open up the gates, go to the back, make a manual adjustment, come out and see where that changed the part," Partin said.
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"Not to mention the part quality-with the older-style feeds, we would see excessive variation in the parts when they got downstream," Partin said."Now the consistency is there.I measured hundreds of parts, and we're easily within the 0.005-in. repeatability from stroke to stroke.With the exception of three or four parts per run, we have a good part every time.We've cut down on scrap tremendously."

Partin said he likes the safety features, including the electric stop time test, which used to be a manual activity."Now we can do it in 10 seconds."

He said the tonnage monitoring allows the operator to create a boundary line or signature for the die throughout the full stroke that turns off the machine if it strays out of range."If a die runs at 200 tons normally, I can have that press stop if it hits at 202 or if it hits at 198.If it stops, that tells me that either a punch is broken, or there's a slug in the die, or something has changed that's causing excessive tonnage.

"We picked up about 65 percent of lost downtime," Partin relayed.