Radan - RadbendCNC

Customer Case Study

‘WE GOT EXACTLY WHAT RADAN PROMISED US’
Energy-Recovery Systems OEM Venmar CES Inc.
Ends Press-Brake Bottleneck With Radan’s RadbendCNC

Venmar CES Inc., a leading developer of energy recovery ventilators (ERVs) for public and commercial buildings based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, is reaping dramatic benefits from an upgrade to its computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software. It uses RadbendCNC from Radan / Planit Solutions to program its three AccurPress press brakes.

Venmar credits RadbendCNC with reducing the time needed to program jobs by 65% and errors due to programming by about 90%. Press-brakes had been a huge production bottleneck.

“Those gains add up to our recovering the investment in RadbendCNC and its implementation in less than one year,” said Wade Tkachuk, director of management information systems (MIS) for this large metal fabricator. Only the savings in direct labor were tabulated. Located in a tight labour market, Venmar is very concerned with boosting worker productivity.

RadbendCNC Gains At A Glance:

  -- 90% fewer programming errors.
  -- 65% reduction in programming time and related labour.
  -- Press-brake bottleneck ended.
  -- 1 programmer now does the work of 2.

“With press brakes no longer a bottleneck, that has helped us with on-time deliveries,” Tkachuk said. Moreover, the larger workload previously handled by two programmers is now done mostly by one. That allows more quotations, design refinements, and projects.

Saskatoon turns out 1,000 to 1,400 sheet metal pieces a day. All the forming and bending work is done on two AccurPress press brakes with a third coming online. The plant also has two Murata Wiedemann turret punch presses. They have been programmed with Radan’s Radpunch software for many years.

Venmar CES systems reduce energy losses from ventilation systems in large buildings including schools, hospitals, shopping malls, office complexes, recreational centres and gyms. Rising energy costs are boosting demand for its systems. Venmar has more than one million systems in North America and the company also sells worldwide. A sister plant in St-Léonard d’Aston, Quebec, makes larger, highly customized systems.

The Radan RadbendCNC Answer

Press brakes had been an operating and a programming bottleneck at Venmar CES. The productivity opportunities were to:

•   Take advantage of a recent production-floor expansion and satisfy strong customer demand.
•   Keep pace with steady business growth and improve on-time deliveries without building                inventories of finished goods or work-in-process (W-I-P).
•   Offset higher steel costs.
•   Compensate for the weak U.S. dollar, which gives U.S.-based competitors a pricing edge.

Among the gains from implementing RadbendCNC software were :

• Automated placement of finger-stops on press brake back gauges. Many CAM packages still require programmers to set each finger-stop by hand, as did Venmar’s previous CAM software. “A great deal of other programming information had to be manually added,” Tkachuk noted.

• Automated tool selection that accommodates many gauges of steel and types of bends. Venmar CES uses steel from 20 ga. to 11ga. (approximately 0.035 to 0.125 inch).

• With its libraries of predefined tooling, RadbendCNC selects the proper punches and dies for the thickness of the metal and the radiuses of the programmed bend. “That makes it easy to mix and match jobs even if the gauges and sheet widths are different,” Tkachuk said. RadbendCNC also establishes sequences of bends.

• The ability to directly use solid models from the same Autodesk Inventor that Venmar designers use. Radan associativity ensures that even the smallest design change made after a program has been developed will not be overlooked.

Quick CAD-to-CAM throughput is key to Venmar CES productivity because about 70% of its jobs have some customisation. Venmar also standardised press brake tooling, which reduced setup times and variability.

The results in productivity gains from using RadbendCNC on the AccurPress machines were a 65% reduction in programming time and 90% reduction in forming errors and scrap due to programming. These add up to $14,000 Canadian just in the first year and included only operators’ time at the press brakes and extra handling related to bend errors.

Most of the RadbendCNC gains flow from its highly accurate 3D graphics.

“RadbendCNC lets us see if there is going to be forming interference on the job,” Tkachuk said. “If there any potentially unbendable conditions, we can see them in the software.”

The previous CAM software lacked RadbendCNC’s functionality, with only 2D graphics. “It could not import solid models,” he explained. “It could only bring in the geometry after it had been converted to the old DWG [AutoCAD drawing] format. And it could not place bends automatically the way RadbendCNC does.”

The most fundamental result from using RadbendCNC at Saskatoon “is increasing our CAD to CAM throughput,” Tkachuk said. “Getting from the design to the physical part and getting jobs off the turret punch presses and onto the press brakes goes more quickly.”

Wade Tkachuk sums up - “one of the biggest benefits from using RadbendCNC is predictability “That means a lot more than just avoiding errors. We found that the promised gains in programming time and the actual benefits were identical. The projected one-year return on investment [ROI] was achieved. So were the anticipated benefits from the new capabilities we got with RadbendCNC.

We got exactly what Radan promised us.”