Elevator Manufacturer
Longer Life + Lower Maintenance = $50,000+ Savings
An elevator manufacturer replaced their existing punch presses with Trumpf-style presses. The press manufacturer offered to sell them its standard tooling. Since this was a new tooling style for the company, and trusting Mate for their previous needs, the company contacted Mate sales engineer Jeff Kraus to consult about the tooling.
LONGER LIFE, LOWER MAINTENANCE
After reviewing the press manufacturer’s tooling, Jeff recommended Mate’s NEXT™ insert style tooling for Trumpf-style presses for several reasons. First, all NEXT punches are made from Mate’s premium M4PM™ powdered tool steel that offers superior wear resistance. One Mate NEXT punch provides twice the life of the standard product made from conventional M2 high-speed steel. Extended life also means less downtime for sharpening and maintenance. Since the elevator manufacturer punched harder materials such as stainless steel, NEXT would be a great solution.
Second, NEXT offers faster set-up times. The punch holders are designed with integral precision alignment features and a captive draw bolt, eliminating the need for an alignment fixture. Simply insert the punch into the desired alignment and lock it into place.
Jeff further explained two other benefits of the NEXT system is that the inserts take up less space than the standard tooling and, depending on the punch size, only two punch holder sizes were needed. This meant that the company didn’t need to invest in additional tooling storage.
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SAVINGS. SAVINGS. SAVINGS.
After evaluating both products, the company decided to purchase the Mate NEXT system.
- During the first year, the company purchased 964 NEXT punch inserts at $34,000 instead of 1,928 of the manufacturer’s punches at $72,000. With twice the grind life, they saved $38,000 in punch purchases.
- Maintaining another 964 M2 steel punches would require 1.5 times that of the NEXT M4PM steel punches. The company estimated that it takes 5.5 minutes to sharpen a punch, So:
- 5 minutes per punch X 964 punches = 5,302 minutes per year or 88.4 hours
- 5 times more maintenance time equates to 88.4 x 1.5 = 133 hours
- Subtracting the additional 88.4 hours from 133 = 44.6 saved maintenance hours
- At their burden rate of $75 per hour, the company saved an additional $3,300
- Since NEXT takes up less space, they did not have to invest $10,000 in tooling storage.
