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The Fabricator October 2012
The Fabricator is North America's leading magazine for the metal forming and fabricating industry. The magazine delivers the news, technical articles, and case histories that enable fabricators to do their jobs more efficiently. The Fabricator has served the industry since 1970.
Cutting the GTAW remote control cord
- By Dan Davis
- Oct 23, 2012
- Arc Welding
- Article
A truly remote-controlled foot pedal for TIG welding sounds like the perfect tool for job site fabricators, but welders that work in a small cell are also finding advantages associated with cutting the welding control cord.
First to the punch
- By Scott Tacheny
- Oct 23, 2012
- Punching and Other Holemaking
- Article
The ability to move from one job to the next quickly is essential to a shop’s ability to produce more parts in less time. An important part of this involves shortening changeover time at the punch press.
3-D CAD: Handling imported data during sheet metal design
- By Gerald Davis
- Oct 19, 2012
- Shop Management
- Article
Columnist Gerald Davis is ready to rip into the process of converting imported 3-D parts to flattened parts.
The rebirth of a metal fabrication business
- By Tim Heston
- Oct 19, 2012
- Shop Management
- Article
In September 2011, thanks to changing weather patterns and unintended consequences of water management, GT Fabrication was flooded yet again. The family business has been through this before. Why stay in the game? Because the metal fabrication community was there to help.
How to develop the next-generation leader
- By Mark Ernst
- Oct 19, 2012
- Shop Management
- Article
Preparing a plan to develop the next-generation leader requires a comprehensive, objective analysis. It should cover where the business should go over the next several years, and what skills the next leader will need to take the company in that direction.
Cellular manufacturing meets the front office
- By Rajan Suri
- Oct 19, 2012
- Shop Management
- Article
Quick-response manufacturing takes a time-based approach that looks at the entire process from start to finish. This includes one vital element: restructuring the organization away from a job-function approach and toward lead-time reduction. To reduce lead-times, you need to restructure your organization so that people shepherd projects through multiple steps.
When to cut a common line
- By Kevin Keane
- Oct 12, 2012
- Punching and Other Holemaking
- Article
All things being equal, it stands to reason that a single separating cut is always preferable where possible. But all things are not equal, and there are times when common-line cutting is not the best option.
Bending for the internal customer
- By Bill Bossard
- Oct 12, 2012
- Bending and Forming
- Article
Freeing a bending bottleneck can backfire if it simply creates a severe bottleneck downstream. Bending throughput may increase, but overall throughput--the metric that really matters--may not. That’s why the best bending automation considers not only the bending department but also the throughput of the entire plant.
A plate rolling primer
- By Tim Heston
- Oct 12, 2012
- Bending and Forming
- Article
The FABRICATOR talks with Jeff Visser, production managers at Avon, Mass.-based BEPeterson, about the basics of plate rolling operation. Plate rolling is part art, part science. It requires skill, and not just anyone can do the job right.
Wisconsin fabricator ramps up in-house training
- By Tim Heston
- Oct 12, 2012
- Shop Management
- Article
As the skilled labor crisis continued unabated, Schuette Metals launched a unique in-house training program. Sources said that more than anything else, good training will be key to the fabricator’s future success.
10 questions to ask for safeguarding success
- By Douglas Raff
- Oct 9, 2012
- Punching and Other Holemaking
- Article
Applied correctly, safeguarding can add to a company’s bottom line by preventing injury, improving the manufacturing process, and optimizing the overall shop environment.
The art is just a front
- By Eric Lundin
- Oct 9, 2012
- Bending and Forming
- Article
Dore Capitani cut right to the chase: "My wife says the art is just a front." Maybe so. The former industrial mechanic, who worked his way up to master mechanic, spent the early part of his career working for a packaging manufacturer, and later for a glass container manufacturer, and learned how...
Punching up productivity
- By Dan Davis
- Oct 8, 2012
- Punching and Other Holemaking
- Article
Mid-West Metal Products Co. Inc., Muncie, Ind., needed a new punching press for a large-volume order and soon found out just how fast production flow can change on a shop floor with new technology.
The laser as a lean manufacturing tool
- By Dan Cruz
- Oct 8, 2012
- Laser Cutting
- Article
How many fabricating shops run a less-than-optimized cutting head just to avoid the downtime of switching out the head? S&B Metal Products, Lakeland, Fla., used to do like that until it got a laser cutting machine that was a better fit for its low-volume, high-mix fabricating jobs.
You can machine it, but can you weld it?
- By Michael Pfeifer
- Oct 8, 2012
- Metals/Materials
- Article
Free-machining steels shouldn’t be welded. If a fabricator has a job requiring a free-machining steel, engineers and fabricators should get together to determine the best action. Can welding be avoided by using fasteners? If not, which weldable materials exhibit acceptable machining characteristics, and do these materials meet design requirements?
- Podcasting
- Podcast:
- The Fabricator Podcast
- Published:
- 04/16/2024
- Running Time:
- 63:29
In this episode of The Fabricator Podcast, Caleb Chamberlain, co-founder and CEO of OSH Cut, discusses his company’s...
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