Several Venmar CES RV units in various
stages of assembly, showing the variety and
complexity of the sheet metal components
formed with Radan Radbend from Planit
Solutions. Image courtesy of Venmar CES.
'WE GOT EXACTLY WHAT RADAN PROMISED US’
Energy-Recovery Systems OEM Venmar CES Inc. Ends Press-Brake Bottleneck With Radan’s Radbend
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 Radbend from Radan / Planit Solutions to program its three AccurPress press brakes. Radan is based in Forest Lake, Minnesota, USA.
Venmar credits Radbend with reducing the time needed to program jobs by 65% and errors due to programming by about 90%. Press-brakes had been a production bottleneck.
“Those gains add up to our recovering the investment in Radbend 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 labor market, Venmar is very concerned with boosting worker productivity.
The press brake in the foreground is the
new Accurpress 717512. Behind it (at
right)
is the Murata Weideman Centrum 2000
turret punch press. At the top of the picture
are the 2 older Accurpress brakes. Image
courtesy of Venmar CES.
Radbend Gains At A Glance
- 90% fewer programming errors
- 65% reduction in programming time and related labor
- Press-brake bottleneck ended
- 1 programmer now does the work of 2
SOLUTION: The Radan Radbend Answer
Press brakes had been both 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 Radbend software were:
The Murata Weideman turret punch
presses. The Centrum 2000 is in the
foreground and the Vectrum 3056 Alpha
is in the background.Image courtesy
of Venmar CES
- Automated placement of finger-stops on press brake back gages.
- 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 manually added,” Tkachuk noted.
- Automated tool selection that accommodates many gages 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, Radbend selects the proper punches and dies for the thickness of the metal and the radiuses of the programmed benda. “That makes it easy to mix and match jobs even if the gauges and sheet widths are different,” Tkachuk said. Radbend also establishes sequences of bends.
- The ability to directly use solid models from the same Autodesk Inc. 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 customization. Venmar also standardized press brake tooling, which reduced setup times and variability.
The results in productivity gains from using Radbend on the AccurPress machines were a 65% reduction in programming time and 90% reduction in forming errors and scrap due to programming.
Closeup of the Radbend screen
showing
use of Radan software from
Planit Solutions. Image courtesy of
Venmar CES
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 bender errors.
Most of the Radbend gains flow from its highly accurate 3D graphics. “Radbend 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 Radbend’s had 2D graphics only. “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 Radbend does.”
The most fundamental result from using Radbend 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.”
Summing up, “one of the biggest benefits from using Radbend is predictability,” Tkachuk said. “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 [R-O-I] was achieved. So were the anticipated benefits from the new capabilities we got with Radbend. We got exactly what Radan promised us.”
