FandMmag.com |

Tom Abeyta stepped onto a fab shop floor in June 33 years ago thinking it would be a summer job. It turned out to be a career. Last year he sold his stock as co-owner of one of the top five metal shops in the Portland, Ore., area, Integrated Metal Components, a company with a reputation that many a company manager would kill for: a 95-percent employee retention rate.

That's no small feat for a 33-person shop fighting rising health-care, raw-material and operating costs. The key, he says, beyond fair pay, of course, is training—and no where is that more important in a sheet-metal shop than at the press brake. No matter how well a part is punched or cut, the customer won't walk away happy unless the part is formed up correctly. (Abeyta has since started a new company that will market a new product he invented and for which he recently filed a patent.)

The equipment has come a long way from 33 years ago, when machines were innately inaccurate. Finding the proper bend allowances could (and at times still can) cause migraines, particularly for material with inconsistent thicknesses. The old mechanical brakes featured wide operating clearances between ball joints, rocker arms and other elements. An operator couldn't accurately air bend because the machine wouldn't close in all those gaps, so coining ruled the day. They still had to shim, of course, because they used planed, not ground, tooling.

Fast-forward 33 years and some companies are boasting 95 percent uptime, two shifts a day. "In the past, that wouldn't be possible," says Casey Schlachter, press brake product manager for Bystronic, Hauppauge, N.Y. What does make it possible is offline software.

Software ties lasers, punching and bending together. If a certain V die is changed, the tool can be entered into the offline software, which will "change the whole flat layout for the laser [and other processes] and change dimensions automatically for the new bend allowance," Schlachter says.

Software saves hundreds of part programs. No longer must operators rely on a bend-allowance chart, set the backgauge and perform manual crowning and other skills learned over years. All that "black magic" is now stored neatly in the machine control.

But does this mean press-brake operators can become mere button pushers, and companies no longer should worry about hiring, and keeping, skilled personnel?

According to many—no.

Training for Retention

"In my experience, the press brake is the most difficult machine to run in a precision sheet-metal shop," Abeyta says. "You need to think through all the steps, of how to process the part and see problems ahead of time, and that's something I don't think a computer will ever do as well as a person."

Finding talent has always been a challenge, even during economic downturns. Companies either find experienced employees, train from within or do both. Of course, quality training brings up a Catch-22: It makes an employee more valuable, yet also hanging fruit for competitors.

"But try thinking about it from another perspective," suggests Bill Bossard, president of robotic press brake and fabrication cell manufacturer Salvagnini America, Hamilton, Ohio. "What happens if you don't train employees, and they stay?"