New Hatebur Amp 20 Installation Completed at Metform
By Russ Reusch, Hot forming supervisor
posted: October/November 2006

Metform broke ground on March 1st for the installation of a new Hatebur Amp 20 Hotformer, conveyor, bar heater and bar rack. The installation involved several outside contractors in addition to the Metform Engineering and Maintenance staff.

After the decision was made to purchase the new equipment, the Metform team, consisting of Dave Harris (VP of Engineering), Stan Nadig (Process and Tooling Engineer), Steve Whiting (Plant Manager) and Steve Dykstra (Maintenance Supervisor) contacted an architect to draw up the plans for installation. Once the plans were put together, area contractors were asked for bids to do the work.

The first work to be done was breaking and removing the cement floor that previously housed part of the shipping area for Metform. Next came the excavation work to put pilings in and dig the foundations for the machine and the in-ground coolant holding tank. Forms were built for pouring concrete and cement trucks began rolling in. Plumbing and electrical installation proceeded once the foundations were poured.

After 2 1/2 months of activity, the machine riggers were contacted and working with Steve Dykstra and his maintenance staff (J.R., Cap, Mick, Darrell, Kenny, and Chris), the new Amp 20 was placed and mounted in its new home. Service Engineers were sent in from Hatebur of Switzerland, (the machine maker), Newelco of England (the bar heater manufacturer) and Girard of Ohio (U.S. equipment rep.) to do the electrical hook up and initial break-in of the equipment. First came Boris and Cyril from Hatebur to hook up power, level and test run the Amp 20. Then came Andrew from Newelco in England to hook up incoming power to the bar heater unit for raw material heating. All through the process, Mike and Doug from Girard Associates in Ohio were here to facilitate and put the finishing touches on the installation and make sure all components of the workcenter talk to each other electronically with monitors and controls. After a period of about 19 weeks of on-going activity, on July 13th, the machine was ready to fire up for production.

The first part to run on the new machine was an M20 flange nut for Ford Motor Company. Hotform’s 2nd shift tool assembler, Dennis Neyens worked many extra hours along with the assistance of Monte Keckler (1st shift Tool Assembler), Kevin Krontz (Tool Room Supervisor) and his staff to fit and adapt tooling to the machine and get it ready for production. Once all was in place, Dennis fired up the machine and began running parts.

The increased bar heater capacity along with the precision of the new equipment allows operators to run at the rate of 180 strokes per minute compared to 120 strokes per minute on the older Hatebur Amp 20. Included in this installation is a press load monitoring system designed by BRANKAMP of Germany. This unit not only monitors press load to protect the machine from overload, but also will be a fantastic tool for setting the machine up with reliable repeatability.

There are some bugs to work out yet and some finishing touches to wrap up, but improved efficiency and greater capacity with the new Amp 20 is expected. The operators in the Forming Department have been working six and sometimes seven days a week to keep up with production demands. The addition of this new Hatebur provides the opportunity to relieve some of the overtime, improve efficiency, and have capacity to run more product that is scheduled in the future.