Standard bending cell installed in ten days brings lights out bending to a family OEM

Roll forming machines for gutter production · Press brake tending · Vendor published

The job

KWM Gutterman of Rockdale, Illinois builds most of its gutter roll forming machines in house, cutting parts on laser and saw and then bending them, and could not fill press brake roles; fabrication manager John Young describes operators fatiguing while holding large heavy workpieces at an exact orientation, with errors creeping in late in an 8 hour shift and turning into scrap. The family owned OEM bought a standard large part robotic bending cell from Gladwin Machinery Solutions, pairing a KUKA KR 50 Iontec with an all electric SafanDarley 80 ton brake, rather than commissioning a bespoke integration. Young sets a job up at the end of the day and finds it finished the next morning. The company states the cell shifted labor rather than cutting jobs.

The shop

Employee headcount not published. Founded in the early 1970s and still owned and run by the founding family. The manual press brake work it replaced is described as an 8 hour shift, and press brake fabrication is described as having had no significant automation before this cell.

The equipment

KUKA KR 50 Iontec six axis robot, 50 kg payload, 2500 mm reach, sealed inline wrist. SafanDarley E 80T Premium all electric press brake, 80 tons, O-frame construction. Supplied as a standard option large part robotic bending cell by Gladwin Machinery Solutions. Gripper design, regrip station and tooling changeover method are not published.

The published numbers

Jobs that took two or three days now take only one, published-by-vendor. Production quadrupled on some components, published-by-vendor. Delivery and installation took about 10 days, against 28 week lead times quoted by some other integrators, published-by-vendor. Programming a job takes about a day, published-by-vendor. Lights out overnight production achieved, published-by-vendor. Headcount was not reduced, published-by-vendor. Bending speeds to 48 inches per minute, cycle times up to 30 percent quicker than conventional hydraulic brakes, and energy savings to 50 percent, all published-by-vendor as press brake product claims rather than measurements taken at KWM. Payback not published. Cell cost not published.

Where a source did not publish a figure, this entry says so rather than guessing.

What we would check before believing it applies to you

Although this ran in MetalForming Magazine, the article carries the line that information for it was provided by KUKA Robotics Corp., so treat it as vendor content in a trade outlet and not as independent reporting. The genuinely transferable lesson is procurement, not robotics: buying a pre engineered standard cell instead of a bespoke integration is why install took 10 days rather than 28 weeks, and for a shop with no automation engineer a catalogue cell with a known gripper and part envelope is usually the right first project. Read the throughput claims narrowly, because quadrupled production on some components is a best case part and not a plant average, and the 30 percent faster cycle and 50 percent energy figures are brochure claims about the press brake that would be true with or without the robot. What is missing is everything that decides a real bending project: no cell cost, no payback, no gripper description and no account of how parts are regripped between hits, and on machine frames and brackets it is hems, boxes and flange collisions that force a regrip and eat the cycle time. Before assuming the same result, confirm your heaviest blank and longest bend fit an 80 ton, 50 kg payload envelope, and count how many tooling setups your job mix needs per day, because set it at night and collect it in the morning only holds for a job that runs on a single tooling setup.

Sources