Tube Specialties Company (TSCO) is a subcontract manufacturer of large diameter tubular parts for the U.S. heavy truck industry. TSCO operates from three sites: Troutdale, OR, Statesville, NC, and Saltillo, Mexico. Over recent years the batch sizes requested by many of TSCO's clients have become much smaller, and order quantities ranging up to around 50 now account for a majority of production output. 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. TSCO bends a lot of stainless steel tubing and has dozens of hydraulically powered bending machines. It typically has around 25,000 active part numbers on its books at any time, so production is also constantly changing. Many of the machines that TSCO operates might be used to produce between five and 10 different parts each day. When setting up a hydraulic tube bending machine for a new batch of parts, it is fairly common to create one and sometimes two pieces of scrap before the desired shape is achieved. Material costs have risen sharply, resulting in costly routinely generated scrap. TSCO sought for a solution in two main areas: reductions in scrap and energy savings. TSCO selected Unison's brand of all-electric CNC tube bending machines over hydraulically powered machines. According to TSCO, these machines are configured significantly faster than hydraulic machines, increasing production uptime. The machines' all-electric bending capability is based on precision servomotors. The machines were sold and supplied by Unison's U.S. partner, Horn Machine Tools. The five new Unison tube bending machines offer bending capability that can fabricated best ranging in size from small bore tubing up to five inches, and will be used to manufacture a very wide range of parts from hydraulic tubes to components for the water coolant system and exhaust pipes. Another advantage for TSCO is the greater range of shapes that can be programmed, due to the wider range of mandrel positions that Unison machines can typically perform - providing the means to fabricate complex parts easily and eliminating the need for welding sections together. Some of the new machines will move to the company's latest plant in Mexico following initial proving periods at one of the company's main U.S. production sites where programming and bending tool and die manufacture will take place. Tom Kerensky, Director of Equipment, Procurement and Maintenance for TSCO, said, "We have had some all electric Unison machines for several years and the repeatability of bending is excellent. On one of these machines, for example, I know that over some two years of production there has been no scrap at all. And this machine is often used to fabricate very complex part shapes, including a 12-foot brake tube that has 12 bends." "Unison's all-electric machines can reload a program and replicate the setup conditions under software control, due to the closed loop and precise nature of the way the bending axes are controlled - typically eliminating all scrap in day-to-day operations," said a company spokesperson. "The elimination of scrap easily results in savings of several tens of thousands of dollars a year for each all-electric bending machine, substantially shortening the payback times for this new production automation investment." The second key advantage of the new machines for TSCO is energy savings."The cost of electricity has also risen significantly in previous years, and conventional hydraulically powered benders typically consume energy continually because their hydraulic fluid needs to be maintained at high pressure," said the spokesperson. "The new Unison all-electric machines only consume a significant amount of energy when actually performing a bend. The energy savings are believed to be of the order of 90%. "This investment is the latest in a number of purchases of Unison all electric machines that TSCO has made going back to 2006. Although the company continues to run a very large number of hydraulic machines, the advantages of all-electric bending architectures are so great that all-electric technology is preferred for most new machine acquisitions." TSCO also rates Unison's all-electric machines because of the technical support. If there is a problem, Unison and Horn Machine Tools can access any machine via a secure Internet connection, which allows them to run test routines remotely and diagnose problems.According to the company, this facility has been used a couple of times with problems diagnosed within 15-20 minutes each time, minimizing machine downtime. Commenting on the order, Horn Machine Tools' CEO Kent Horn said, "The sheer range of parts that TSCO produces, and the fact that most of its work is for the extremely price-competitive truck and automotive business, makes this application particularly challenging. TSCO is a highly sophisticated user of tube bending machines and as we were also competing against other all-electric machine vendors we are doubly delighted to have won this business." Although the new bending machines are important assets for the company's evolving business operations, TSCO's continued success has been built on the company's "can-do" attitude towards meeting its customers' needs. For instance, on occasion TSCO has devoted a plant's entire production capacity on weekends tomeeting a single customer's needs - to help a company manage its production targets. TSCO also willingly takes on many added-value services, such as sorting parts deliveries into packages for specific trucks that are being produced, to make life easier for its customers. For more information: TSCO 1459 NW Sundial Road Troutdale, OR97060 503-618-8823 / 800-547-2414 www.tubespecialties.com Horn Machine Tools 40473 Brickyard Drive Madera, CA93638 559-431-4131 sales@hornmachinetools.com www.hornmachinetools.com