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Electromagnetic punch press separates itself from the competition

With 1.5 million hits between die sharpenings

Auer Precision Co Inc, Mesa, AZ, had a firing problem. Among Auer's super-precision products are tooling for ceramic substrates--dies about 8´´ square, with as many as 2500 holes, some as small as 0.006´´ in diameter. To process fragile green ceramic, Auer's customers need special plastic separators or interleaves to carry the product through to the firing stage.

Auer solved that problem by using the Lourdes Press system, which develops high tool speed with electromagnetics. Using this system, tool life can be doubled or tripled as a result of reduced tool friction. The brief time the material spends in its plastic phase virtually eliminates the causes of burrs and strings.

Today, in a class 100 laminar flow clean room, the Lourdes press produces about 500,000 of these plastic interleaves. Auer has run millions of these interleaves without any problem at the press.

"A mechanical or hydraulic press comes down and pushes its way through the material. You can actually watch the oomph," says Auer's Bill Lunsford. "On the other hand, the Lourdes works with velocity; it hits with a bang like a bullet and flies through the part. On other presses you start raising burrs earlier in the production run.

"The Lourdes system runs fantastically--it gives us the quality and clean parts we need, is inexpensive, requires practically no maintenance, and, with no hydraulics and inherent hydraulic problems, is perfect for our clean room," Lunsford adds.

Auer Inspection Supervisor Greg Froebel conducts in-process inspections on all products including those produced on Lourdes presses. "The edge quality on the Lourdes-produced parts is as good as you will ever find," Froebel says. "We constantly check for size, location, and roundness, any kind of contamination or defect per our own quality plan. Actually, we have never had a rejection."

Easy installation is another advantage of the Lourdes press. "When we got the Lourdes press, we just wired it in, put the die set into it, added the stops, integrated it with our roller feeds, and we were producing."

Auer is able to run 1.5 million parts between die sharpenings, opposed to 600,000 or 700,000 with a hydraulic press. Auer conducted a test in which the firm ran 720,000 pieces on a hydraulic, took the die set out because burrs were showing up, put it in the Lourdes press without resharpening, and got another 500,000 parts. Lourdes Systems Inc, Hauppauge, NY. http://www.lourdessystems.thomasregister.com

This article was originally published in the
May 1998 issue of Metlfax. * Email the editor: jmckenna
Please Note: some pictures or diagrams are only
available through the printed media.