I believe that the word "Jinjin" is familiar to everyone. This industry, which is closely related to our life, accounts for only 20%-30% of metal processing, but almost all manufacturing industries have sheet metal processing. For example, the machine tool industry, textile machinery industry, food machinery, electrical appliances, instrumentation industry, the domestic sheet metal industry has developed rapidly in recent years, but the information technology professional software vendors for the sheet metal industry are still relatively lacking, so the supply and demand are extremely unbalanced. This article will discuss the equipment situation, operation process, existing problems of the sheet metal industry, and the integrated solution of Metalsoft, a professional sheet metal information service provider.
Sheet metal has not yet had a relatively complete definition. According to a definition in a foreign professional journal, it can be defined as: sheet metal is a comprehensive cold working process for metal sheets (usually below 6mm), including shearing and punching. /cutting/compositing, folding, welding, riveting, splicing, forming (such as car body). Its remarkable feature is the same thickness of the same part.
The basic equipment of the sheet metal factory generally includes a Shear Machine, a CNC Punching Machine/laser, a plasma, a water jet cutting machine (Laser, Plasma, Waterjet Cutting Machine)/Combination Machine, Bending Machine and various auxiliary equipment such as uncoiler, leveling machine, deburring machine, spot welding machine, etc.
1. Sheet metal factory production process
The operation between the departments of the sheet metal factory is not much different from that of the general manufacturing companies. Only the manufacturing process of the products in the workshop is introduced here.
Usually, the three most important steps in a sheet metal factory are cutting, punching, cutting, and folding.
1.1 The first step is the blanking (also called blanking) process. Usually, on-site workers will cut out the large-sized sheets from the large plates according to the development drawings provided by the technical department to obtain the appropriate size parts. In the case of a punch, the dead zone of the clamp must be considered. After the blanking is completed, the worker will mark the item number with a marker on the surface of each piece of material.
Note: Some factories do not have this processing step, type directly on standard plates, and then directly punch/cut.
1.2 The material is then sent to a CNC punch/cutting machine for the punching/cutting process. In this process, an NC (Numerical Control) code needs to be programmed for the part being machined. Most machine tool manufacturers now offer automatic programming software (almost all domestic manufacturers cooperate with foreign software companies for OEM sales, so they do not have their own software R&D team), which greatly facilitates programming engineers. The factors to be considered by stamping/cutting programming engineers are sheet utilization, tooling, efficiency, and accuracy. After the stamping/cutting is completed, the parts are removed from the micro-join and then sent to the bender for bending.
1.3 In the bending process, the main considerations are tool selection, bending sequence, bending compensation, bending interference and so on. Usually, there are also bending programming software sold at random, but most CNC bending machines in China are still manually programmed, often relying too much on the experience of the master. On the other hand, the domestic manufacturing process requirements are still relative to foreign countries. The distance, and thus the efficiency has not improved, the performance of the CNC bending machine has not played to the extreme.
1.4 Finally, depending on the product, welding, grinding, painting, assembly, packaging, etc. may be carried out, and will not be described here.
2. Status of the sheet metal industry
Overall, in recent years, the sheet metal industry has developed rapidly. There are several reasons for this.
2.1 Increased production capacity requirements. China is increasingly becoming an international processing and manufacturing center. With the increasing foreign investment, the demand for metal processing capacity is increasing, and the electrical control box and machine casing in the metal processing industry are generally sheet metal parts. Demand for sheet metal processing capacity is also increasing.
2.2 The processing accuracy is low and easy to get started. As far as gold processing is concerned, precision is very common in a few lines, and the complexity of the process is relatively high, and even some parts process reaches dozens of ways. Therefore, gold processing companies usually need a variety of mechanical equipment to meet different process requirements. The punching precision of sheet metal is generally about ±0.1mm, and the bending precision can generally reach ±0.5mm, so the precision is much lower than that of gold processing.
2.3 High profits. For example, stamping can reach about 30%, while laser cutting can reach 50% or more.
3. Summary The domestic sheet metal industry mainly has the following major features:
3.1 outdated equipment
As far as the equipment is concerned, at present, a large part of the domestic sheet metal enterprises basically stay in the production mode of small workshops. Generally, there are only one or two punching machines plus one bending machine. A better condition may add a laser cutting. machine. At present, most of the punches that people have seen are basically relatively low-end punching machines. There are no automatic unloading ports, air blowing devices, etc. Even some machine programming software is still in the DOS era, only in some relatively large foreign companies. High-tech enterprises will use equipment such as FMS. These have greatly affected the competitiveness of enterprises.
3.2 technology behind
A large state-owned enterprise in China has many large-scale sheet metal equipment. Most of them were purchased seven or eight years ago. Due to the flow of employees, the technology/experience in the handover is often not fully accepted by the novice. The acceptance level is only about 50%. Later, although the equipment was advanced (such as FMS), it was still used as a general compound machine, and the micro-connection was not used in the manufacturing process, and the efficiency of the machine tool could not be maximized.
3.3 Information occlusion
Nowadays, the speed of information update is overwhelming, but the heads of companies that individuals are exposed to rarely spend time to access relevant information, not to mention specialized departments that specialize in intelligence and information gathering.
3.4 industry outlook is promising
According to a data, the annual growth of the domestic sheet metal industry is 11-15%, much higher than other manufacturing industries, and the profit of the sheet metal industry is still quite rich.
I have visited a company before. The company has three major products, one is compressor, sheet metal products and air filtration products. The only profitable company is the sheet metal.
4. Problems:
4.1 The use of CNC machine tools is low.
For example, in recent years, the application of CNC technology in China has become more and more intensive, and various CNC machine tools are becoming more and more popular. However, there are currently a large number of experienced senior technicians in China, and in some areas, there is even a phenomenon that the monthly salary is 8,000 and it is difficult for senior technicians. . Because of the lack of such talents, most of the domestic CNC equipment does not maximize performance.
4.2 CNC software update is slow and the versatility is poor.
From the customers I contacted, most of the CNC programming software used by most customers is OEM software that is bundled and sold. Many old machine tools still use the DOS version of the software, and the functions are relatively backward, and the user's skills need to be improved.
If there are multiple sets of software from different machine tool manufacturers in the factory, it will bring inconvenience in personnel training, equipment and operation management, programming efficiency, equipment task switching and so on. In addition, most of the use of DNC software, floppy disk loss, staff running back and forth between the field and the office will inevitably greatly reduce the factory's production efficiency. Therefore, it is imperative to manage all the punch/cut/composite devices in a unified software.
4.3 Informatization is not high
At present, most sheet metal factories have implemented departmental software solutions such as CAD/CAM/PDM systems, CRM systems, and logistics systems. This has formed a so-called "information island", and the information exchange between various departments is not smooth, which greatly restricts the production and development of enterprises. Therefore, the implementation of enterprise-level management software is the best solution for enterprises to solve the problem of information islands.
5.METALSOFT's integrated solution for the sheet metal industry.
METALSOFT is an integrated software provider specializing in informatization in the sheet metal industry in California, USA. With 26 years of R&D experience in North America, METALSOFT has successfully provided complete solutions for thousands of companies, and with large machine tools such as AMADA and TRUMPF. The manufacturer has reached a good cooperative relationship.
In response to the problems in the sheet metal industry, METALSOFT has provided a number of products over the past two decades to meet the rapidly growing demand of the sheet metal industry.
5.1 The main product is FabriWIN, a universal programming software that can be applied to any punching/cutting/composite equipment. It has been applied to almost all manufacturers' machines.
5.2 Another product is the bending machine programming software FabriBEND. The software has a good user interface, so it is very easy to get started.
The “bend simulation†and “report generation†in FabriBEND provide you with feedback before the production of the workpiece. Usually, this feedback is available after the completion of a workpiece. Do you expect to get the bent workpiece directly? ? When you use FabriBEND, you can directly implement real-time simulation from plane to 3D. This allows you to adjust the model to match the design intent, and then assign the tool to your intent. With a single click, you can get the flat shape, and the simple process in FabirWIN can complete the programming process.
5.3. DNC software FabriTALK
This software can realize the fast networking of machine tools, improve the transmission efficiency of CNC machine tools, reduce disk loss and personnel's copying operation time.
5.4 FabriTRAK is an efficient ERP software designed to solve the management of sheet metal factories. The software is flexible and can be customized according to the specific needs of customers.
5.5 Finally, FabriVISION, an efficient CMM flat inspection equipment for the quality control department. The device has the following excellent features:
* Shorten the detection time of the first workpiece.
* Manage detected data.
* Eliminate errors due to manual detection and human error.
* Quickly digitize existing flat CAD files.
* Multiple CCD camera technology on the mobile rack eliminates errors due to reflections and part position.
The above five sets of software have complete interfaces with each other, which can easily realize the integrated operation and completely solve the informationization needs of the sheet metal enterprise.
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