Opening market opportunities at Scott Springfield

In 2021, as they expanded with a second facility, Scott Springfield management made the decision to automate the sheet metal fabrication area. They chose Prima’s PSBB compact flexible manufacturing system.

Scott Springfield Mfg. Inc., Calgary, is a supplier of custom air handling systems. Using the latest technologies to design and manufacture custom air handlers, the company provides its customers with a flexible solution to their air handler needs. The team works closely with sales representatives, building owners, facility managers, engineers, and contractors to design reliable, safe, and energy-efficient air handling packages. Scott Springfield uses the same philosophy upon which the company was founded: Develop market partnerships, optimize equipment design, maximize performance, control final cost, and deliver a product you can be proud of.

The company was founded in 1978 and made HVAC products primarily for hospitals and oil industries in Alberta and B.C., said Nathan Smith, sales and business development manager at Scott Springfield.

“Today, we have greatly expanded our market, and our client list includes high-profile medical facilities, laboratories, institutional facilities, government agencies, data centres, as well as industrial organizations in oil and gas, mining, aerospace, and anywhere special materials or special requirements are needed on the air handling side,” he said.

Manufacturing

The HVAC products are manufactured in one of two Calgary-based facilities, one with 120,000 sq. ft., and the other, the main fabrication area, with 145,000 sq. ft. A total of 250 employees work in these facilities. Over the years, the fabrication equipment has consisted of manual shears, presses, notching machines, press brakes, a panel bender, and other manual tools. However, in 2021, as they expanded with a second facility, Scott Springfield management made the decision to automate the sheet metal fabrication area. They chose the PSBB, a compact flexible manufacturing system from Prima Power, Arlington Heights, Ill.

The PSBB (which stands for punching, shearing, buffering, and bending) processes blank sheets into ready-bent, precise components automatically. The combo storage allows processing of components from a variety of materials, which can be changed, as programmed automatically. The sheets are transferred into a Prima Power Shear Genius punch/shear cell. After shearing, the components are sent to buffering and subsequent bending in an automatic bending cell.

Material flow is flexible and the buffering function ensures that optimal operation, in terms of manufacturing cost and throughput time, always can be chosen no matter the manufacturing task. Flexible buffering ensures optimal operation of integrated machines.

The main components of the PSBB line include:

• Shear Genius (SGe) servo-electric punch/shear combination
• Buffer tables
• Servo-electric Express Bender

Consistency Through Automation

With the punch/shear concept, the objective is to provide a machine capable of transforming a full-size sheet into finished parts. These parts can be moved to the final production stages for immediate integration directly into the final product assembly.

The SGe can process jobs with minimal setup times and perform lights-out, unmanned operations. It increases material productivity through efficient and versatile nesting programs. Loading, punching, forming and upforming, unloading, sorting, and stacking are automated, resulting in a finished part with reduced scrap and manual labour requirements and increased productivity.

The SGe eliminates wasteful skeletons and costly secondary operations such as deburring. Nibble edges on the part exteriors are eliminated through the use of the integrated right-angle shear. With the punch/shear, the sheet is loaded and squared automatically without human interference,ensuring very accurate parts. In fact, the same clamps that hold the sheet for punching also hold it for shearing. In essence, it allows the automated process to begin with a full-sized sheet and end with a finished part, all in one operation.

With the Shear Genius concept, the objective is to provide a machine capable of transforming a full-size sheet into finished parts. These parts can be moved to the final production stages for immediate integration directly into the final product assembly.

“We need excellent accuracy and speed when punching multiple panels with many holes,” said Javier Vazquez, plant manager at Scott Springfield. “On one panel, it used to take us 40 minutes to drill the holes. On the Shear Genius, it takes two minutes. Any part that we can automate and still have a consistent and reliable dimension with the same quality, we immediately put on the PSBB.”

Shear Details

The automatic clearance setting (ACS) of the servo-electric, right-angle shear speeds up the process of changing from one material thickness to another. A wide range of thicknesses can be sheared, up to 5 mm in aluminum.

The shear has a unique system to sort parts and scrap. If there are any trims or remnants on the sheet, it is sorted out through the shear frame and conveyor.

The right-angle shear is an integral part of the cell and not a separate machine. The sheet is firmly held throughout the fabrication process, resulting in a highly accurate component.

When shearing large pieces, an automatic lifting mechanism integrated in the conveyor holds the parts to maintain accuracy.

The lateral forces caused by the shearing action are compensated using pneumatic sheet holders for maintaining shearing quality and high tolerances. In the right-angle shear, sheet holders are programmable, allowing shearing close to forms.

Buffering

Material flow can be arranged in flexible ways to transfer parts directly to automatic bending, to balance the different time requirements of bending and punching/shearing, to exit material from the system, and to bring new material into it. The picking and stack robot (PSR) ensures parts are always placed directly to the stack and never dropped, which helps to optimize production flow.

Bending

The EBe servo-electric Express Bender is a bending system designed specifically for each fabricator’s production requirements to achieve maximum productivity, quality, and repeatability. The bending operation is fully automated, from the loading of flat punched parts to the unloading of the finished product.

“The efficiency of the EBe allows us to take a job that takes 10 hours on a manual press brake and reduce it to one hour on the EBe,” said Vazquez. “We expect this 10 to 1 ratio to rise much higher with additional experience on the machine.”

“We produce hundreds of panels on the EBe and they all come out with the same quality,” added Byron Paegel, production supervisor.

The bending operation is fully automated, from the loading of flat punched parts to unloading of the finished product. Prima Power EBe provides the high bending quality required in demanding applications. The quality is achieved through precise control of bending axes, fast and smooth bending motion, programmability, and rigid construction that is immune to variation in thermal conditions.

Press Brake

Scott Springfield also purchased a Prima Power eP servo-electric press brake. The unit features high acceleration, deceleration, and fast response times. Compared to conventional brakes, considerable productivity increases can be achieved, and reduced cycle times of up to 30 per cent are possible.

“We fabricate some parts that just get punched and sheared and then manually bent on the press brake due to the size of the components,” explained Vazquez.

New Market Challenge

“The opportunity to enter new markets required much more capacity than we had prior to our purchase of the PSBB,” said Vazquez. “The automated Prima Power line allowed us to increase our production to meet this challenge and still have additional capacity with just one line.”

“Floor space was another critical decision we had,” added Smith. “Every product we manufacture is custom and varies in layout and size—up to 150 ft. by 44 ft. All those separate processes take up a lot of floor space. The PSBB’s compact footprint really helped us shrink that down and gave us the area to build more units.”

It helped that the company has been well trained to operate the equipment.

“The training and service from Prima Power has been great,” concluded Paegel. “The technicians are skilled people, and they are available. When you call the support line, they pick up and transfer you to the right person. You get the problem solved quickly and you are up and running.”

The Bottom Line

“The PSBB automation has allowed us to at least double our capacity and eventually will triple our output,” said Vazquez. “It also will allow us to capture more market share and be able to better service our customers today and in the future.”

“Automation is really the way of the future in manufacturing,” emphasized Kevin Whittaker, designer. “Our operators can improve their careers by learning to utilize machines like the Shear Genius and EBe.”

“The PSBB has supported our growth and it has improved our bottom line,” said Smith. “It has affected not only the panel creation but removed additional cutting and layout requirements that we were completing down the line.”

“The PSBB has become a focal point at Scott Springfield,” noted Paegel. “When one of our customers views the PSBB, there are smiles on their faces when they see how a part is transformed from a flat sheet of material to a beautifully bent part at the end of the line.”

The eP-Brake features the advantages of high acceleration, deceleration, and fast response times of the servo-electric drive system.

Scott Springfield Mfg. Inc., scottspringfield.com

Prima Power, www.primapower.com

From left to right, Scott Springfield team members Kevin Whittaker, designer; Byron Paegel, production supervisor; Nathan Smith, director of sales & business development; and Javier Vazquez, director, manufacturing.