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transport and reprocessing costs.“ The aim is to flatten material with minimal property changes, since if it gets too hard it cannot be stamped.”
ABCO’ s six lines are highly integrated, some with automatic stacking systems. ABCO’ s vacuum stacker was the first installed in North America and has since been upgraded with more efficient vacuum technology. Data systems track processing performance, and the business is automating the capture of incoming coil conditions and scrap volumes, giving customers more data to improve their own processes.
The firm’ s latest capability is a blank washer, having completed its first full trial in September. This processing line cleans all types of blanks of debris and lubrication types. Proper lube application can be critical for forming because aluminum blanks can suffer‘ fretting’ in transit – a pitting-like damage caused when they rub together, often because lubricant has been applied at the wrong levels. ABCO has long been able to re-lube offline, but now it can wash blanks, and re-lube them to proper specifications, or return contaminated material to prime, with the service also being available for steel. ABCO’ s next plans a strip washing line; a coilto-coil process combining surface inspection with washing and slitting. This is likely to be a 24-month project, which has only just started.
Many competitors trim coil to width on a separate line and then move it to a blanking line, but ABCO has integrated edge trimming into two automotive lines reducing scrap and handling. A further 84-inch, full-width line with a swing shear is also in progress which will produce rectangles, trapezoids for car hoods, and parallelograms, freeing up presses for more developed blanks.
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