With continuously growing demand for metal fabrication services, manufacturers all over the world look for new innovative technology and production solutions that will let them take on wide range of projects and allow for a reliable and flexible manufacturing process while reducing production costs and lead times. Weil Technology is a global leader in roll forming and welding equipment and trusted partner for manufacturing companies all over the world. In today’s episode we’re visiting York Metal Products at their headquarters in Ontario, Canada. For the past 8 years, we’ve been partnering with York to provide them best in class manufacturing solutions to meet their applications. Established in the 1940’s as York Metal Spinning the company quickly built a great reputation and a strong costumer base. Just like any business, they face their challenges, ups and downs on their path to success. Due to the economic downturn in 2008 a number of their customers run out of business leaving York’s management at a crossroads and feeling that they needed a change. That change came in a form of new leadership that took the company in the new direction fabricating precision-diameter tubes, cylinders and assemblies.
My team came in around 2011 and really the idea was that there was a lot of old-style round tubing manufacturing, good potential costumers but quality and productivity was very poor. We looked at the opportunities in those markets and decided that we wanted to find something that was repeatable and that complimented the existing business that was here already. The Weil Technology was ready right in our real house, to compliment what York Metal Spinning, the company we bought, already did.
How does Weil technology equipment helped York Metal to face the constant job changeovers of a contract manufacturer?
Low volume manufacturing often requires multiple repeated setups with different variances in material. How repeatable you get those setups is the key to low volume manufacturing and how long it takes because that has an impact on the piece price. Therefore, we are far less concerned about low volumes and we would have been in the old manual style multiple set up environment.
You chose to configure your Flexmasters with both laser welding and TIG welding sources. What benefits has that given York?
The greatest ability is a quality weld in aluminum, we had a specific contract prior to Weil where we were supplying some aluminum parts with heavy metal spinning requirements. Those welds were done manually, and the quality was poorer, and the product did not look particularly desirable to the customer. The Weil Technology with a TIG on there, allowed us to make a very round part with a repeatable weld where the spin can go across it without a lot of ripping. We were able to spin deeper, it was a much smaller heat affected zone and our custumer was far happier with the product we got after we started to take weld with the Weil equipment.
What advantages did you see when you upgraded your original CO2 laser to solid state laser?
We find it to be a formable weld, when you’re finished with it, but also the ability to configure the Flexmasters the way we wanted to be able to do it. So in our case, we configure it with one multiroller serving two Flexmasters. We’re able to move the beam back and forth efficiently and maximize the up time of the actual welding stage as the multiroller outperforms the single Flexmasters so in our case we got a faster weld, we use a smaller footprint, we got a more formable weld and easier to setup. So for us it was a huge win.
Dan:
When you bought your first Weil machine you have advanced your company into laser welding. How has that investment paid off in terms of weld quality?
Both laser and TIG in fact have allowed us to expand in areas we would never be able to do before. The size of our previous heat affected zones were huge, the welds were lumpy and as a result when you had to make a deep V-groove to be equivalent tom metal spinning you would get constant cracking.
How has service and support been from Weil North America?
Outstanding, to be honest with you. We are in constant communication with the service techs. I now think it’s best in class.
Tube contract manufacturers can match Yorks level of quality. What is the consistent dimensional accuracy and weld quality done for your business?
My own opinion is that you can’t survive as a small manufacturer unless you invest in technology. And quality isn’t something you can price into your product, quality is a given. It comes with the order and it’s assumed by the costumer. So to achieve that, competitively, you have to invest in the very best technology available and York’s strategy has been to continue to do that at all times.
As you can see, York Metal Products uses our roll forming and welding equipment to achieve the highest quality of their product and to meet their production requirements.
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