TSCO bends a lot of stainless steel tubing, and material costs have risen sharply.
Tube bending technology software#
By contrast, Unison all-electric machines can reload the program and replicate the set-up conditions under software control, thanks to the closed-loop and precise nature of the way the bending axes are controlled, typically eliminating all scrap in day-to-day operations. When setting up a hydraulic tube-bending machine for a new batch of parts, it's fairly common to create one and sometimes two pieces of scrap before the desired shape is achieved. The company already has dozens of hydraulically powered bending machines. Many of these parts are produced to meet the just-in-time demand of the truck manufacturers' assembly lines, and are often delivered several times daily to the point of use. Over recent years the batch sizes requested by many clients have become much smaller, and order quantities ranging up to around 50 now account for a majority of production output. The machines were sold and supplied by Unison US partner, Horn Machine Tools. TSCO, which operates from three sites in Troutdale, OR, Statesville, NC and Saltillo, Mexico, selected the Unison all-electric benders over traditional hydraulically-powered machines for two main reasons: reductions in scrap and energy savings. The new all-electric machines support the company in terms of helping it to keep its costs down, and to respond more flexibly to the just-in-time manufacturing demands of many of its clients. TSCO serves the competitive North American truck and automotive manufacturing sector, and these machines are the latest capital investment designed to help it maintain its leadership position. The machines offer all-electric bending capability based on precision servomotors, and will be used to fabricate a very broad range of tubular parts from brake lines to large diameter exhaust pipes - mainly for clients in the automotive sector. New tube bending machinery eliminates scrap, reduces electricity consumption at heavy truck maker plantĪ Madera, CA, subcontract manufacturer of large diameter tubular parts to the US heavy truck industry, Tube Specialties Company (TSCO), is installing five new-generation CNC tube bending machines from Unison.