News

Jul 13, 2023

Servo press tech helps metal stamper hone its value proposition

Kapco, Grafton, Wis., a large stamping contract manufacturer, was able to win takeover work, compete with offshore stampers, and prove it could improve its customer’s speed to market, with the

Kapco, Grafton, Wis., a large stamping contract manufacturer, was able to win takeover work, compete with offshore stampers, and prove it could improve its customer’s speed to market, with the installation of servo press technology. Images: Kapco

It’s not unusual for consumer product OEMs to produce some or all of its components. In fact, most of them start out that way. But if you’re a supplier with high proficiency in a particular aspect of manufacturing, such as stamping, and you back that up with smart equipment purchases and a great staff, a client’s wisest decision may be to turn that operation over to you.

Winning takeover work by besting a competitor can be a satisfying feat. You’ve leaned your operations, tweaked your efficiencies, purchased your equipment wisely, and managed your staff well to prove your value.

Bringing in takeover work from your own loyal client is a win of another kind. It’s a testament of trust and confidence in your capabilities at the highest level.

That’s what happened at Kapco, Grafton, Wis., a large stamping contract manufacturer, with the purchase of servo press technology.

Kapco’s plants and operations are located primarily in the Milwaukee area, with one plant in Osceola, Wis. The company employs nearly 700 and has more than 600,000 sq. ft. across its nine locations. Its operations comprise 60% stamping, and 40% fabrication and welding. The manufacturer specializes in 7- to 16-ga., medium-draw, medium-volume stampings.

Kapco’s Chairman and CEO, Jim Kacmarcik, is the second generation of family ownership. His father, Tom Sr., started the company in 1972. The company’s first press operator was Tom’s wife, Josephine. “Kapco really had a small, humble beginning,” Kacmarcik said. “We’re really proud of what we have become—from just three pieces of equipment at our original facility to more than 125 today, many of which are best-in-class machines. The growth has been rapid at times, but it has also been intentional, strategic growth.”

Kapco’s customers hail from diverse industries, including power sports, heavy trucking, military vehicles, material handling and warehousing, agriculture, and appliances. The company’s largest customer is a market-leading, off-road power sports vehicle manufacturer. Kapco is in lockstep with the side-by-side and ATV segments, making literally thousands of parts for side-by-side utility vehicles, as well as on-road motorcycles and snowmobiles. The parts it stamps include underbody components, skid plates, headliners, and door frames.

The company, in its 50th year, is in the midst of explosive growth. “We went through a tremendous amount of long-term growth after Jim Kacmarcik took the company over in 2000,” said Kapco VP of Sales Mike Kenny.

The company needed to increase production—quickly.

Kenny explained. “The power sports production cycle is two or three times faster, in terms of frequency and pace, than the typical automotive cycle. So, it's high volume, high pace, and high-speed changeovers. Obviously, when you're working with customers in the power sports vertical, you need to be quick, efficient, and nimble. Speed to market is one of their competitive tools.”

Equipped with four servo presses—a 176-ton, two 220-ton, and a 330-ton—the pressroom was able to double its output. Running parts in the servo presses had positive benefits for the tool and dies as well.

Kenny added, “Our ability to help them get to market faster with higher quality and less expensively is key to our value proposition.”

Kapco looked at ways to accelerate its output and explored adding servo press technology to its fleet of 46 mechanical presses.

“Two situations created the growth that drove us to look at servos,” Kenny said. “We were either taking over work from a customer that was looking to get out of producing the parts themselves or trying to attract companies that had been offshoring but that were looking to reshore.”

The company wanted to make a business case for being able to produce parts faster and less expensively than a customer could do itself.

“First, we needed to show we could be cost-competitive with what a customer thought they could produce themselves. Second, to attract companies that were looking to reshore, we needed to overcome both the material cost advantage and a labor cost advantage that an offshore competitor might have, though they have the disadvantage of the transport and freight costs and delays—which is not insignificant today. Those are things we've always had to compete with, but even more over the last few years.

“Third was labor efficiency. Coming out of COVID, the labor market is very challenging, especially in the manufacturing sector.”

The Kapco operations team looked for productivity results from the pressroom. “We explored what we could get out of a servo press,” Kenny said.

Kenny said a servo press’s increased productivity would put them in a good position to be more competitive than they were, both in terms of cost and delivery times.

Kapco Stamping Engineering Director James Knepp added, “Because of the takeover work in the consumer garage door space we had won recently, we knew we were going to be close on press capacity. We looked at servo press technology to increase capacity. We knew based on our internal research and discussions with industry partners we would be able to run them quicker. So, that's where we started.”

Speed. Knepp said that the primary reason for buying servo technology was the higher strokes per minute (SPM) that he expected the pressroom could attain from them. “We have a lot of standard mechanical presses here in that same tonnage range. Let's say they run in the 40 SPM range full out. The servos would allow us to program a change in the stroke length to increase the run speed beyond 40 SPM by programming a shorter stroke length and increasing output speeds.”

Training its dedicated pressroom staff to transition from programming mechanical presses, with crankshafts, to servo presses was key.

Versatility. Knepp thought that servo press’s versatility in terms of adjustability and stroke profiles would be useful to them as well. “One of the things we really liked about servo presses was the flexibility that they could give us. One servo press gives us the utility of several different presses all in one.”

Space. An additional consideration was floor space, Kenny said. “We needed more output per square footage of space. That was critical to reaching the kind of numbers we needed. We had to get more done in this same footprint.”

Without having a definitive idea of exactly which press sizes it would need to meet unknown demand, the company bought small servo presses at first — an AIDA 110-ton and a SEYI SD1 single-point 176-ton.

Knepp said, “We knew that both the new work and the takeover work we were getting involved medium- and thin-gauge stamping.” The parts are stamped from 10-, 12-, 14-, and even some 16-ga. material. They all were relatively small parts. “We were looking for a small-frame press to handle shorter progressions and smaller dies. By doing that, we could shorten up the feed lines and take advantage of the space savings that gave us.”

Knepp added: “With some of that new work being takeover work, we didn't necessarily know the full scope when we purchased the presses. Pretty quickly, based on the range of parts we acquired, the 110-ton didn't have the requisite capacity, tonnage-wise, for what we needed to do.”

The company kept the 176-ton but traded the 110-ton press for a larger AIDA 330-ton press a year after its initial purchase. Simultaneously, it bought two SEYI SDI 220-ton servo presses—a single-point and a double-point—bringing its servo fleet total to four.

Pace for Speed-to-Market Installation. With COVID supply chain disruptions causing capital equipment delays worldwide, one of the press choice considerations was simply how fast it could be obtained and installed. “One of the things we looked at was what was available—both from a press and a feed line standpoint. There was a big push on our part to get the presses, get them installed, and get them started up,” Knepp said.

At the 176- to 220-ton range, the installation was relatively simple. No foundation work or pit installation was required. “We brought them in, stood them up, put power to them, and started running them,” Knepp said.

He said that the timeframe from installation to the first good piece off the press was about eight weeks.

Feed Lines. A Coe Press Equipment coil feed line supplies the two 220-ton presses, and a Dallas Industries feed line provides material for the 330-ton press. “The feed lines were immediately available and have really fit the bill for what we've needed,” Knepp said. The programming on the feeds was relatively simple so the operators didn’t need extensive training.

The company installed four servo press lines complete with servo coil feed lines.

The servo coil feeds synchronize with the servo movement. There are relatively short feed progressions on most of the parts. “They're more than capable of keeping pace with the servo presses,” Knepp said.

Knepp’s and Kenny’s expectations that the servo presses would speed up production proved to be correct. By adjusting the slide velocity and using the pendulum mode, the pressroom team was able to increase press speed significantly and produce parts faster, accelerating delivery times.

“By setting the servo press in pendulum mode, or half-stroke or half-cycle, that's really where the speed increase came from,” Knepp said. “On average, it's basically doubling what we have done in a traditional mechanical press.

“I can literally take a die out of a mechanical press, put it in a servo, and run it twice as fast.”

Kapco’s toolroom both builds and maintains dies. Almost all of the company’s tooling maintenance is done in-house. The servo presses have had a positive impact on the toolroom as well, Knepp said. “From a tooling perspective, the servo presses’ ability to modify stroke profiles have helped us out in a few ways.”

Forming Tough Materials. The servo press can help stamp high-strength materials, Knepp said. The stamper is using the presses to form carbon steel, aluminum, stainless steel, and galvanized steel.

“Many of the markets we serve are shifting to high-strength, thin material to reduce weight. Some of the materials we stamp now are definitely a change from the standard carbon steel that we had run in the past. By programming different press stroke motion profile changes, we're able to stamp some of those harder-to-form materials.”

Relieving Reverse Tonnage. Being able to program the presses to slow down towards bottom dead center (BDC) has reduced snap-through and reverse tonnage considerably, Knepp relayed. “We can slow down the slide velocity right at the bottom of the stroke as the punch is piercing through the material. With that capability, we’re able to reduce both forward and reverse tonnage just with the press speed, as opposed to altering the tool design.”

Eliminating Shear Angles on Punches. A common method for reducing tonnage has been the addition of shear angles on punches. With the ability to change the slide velocity during specific portions of the stroke, the need for the shear angles on the punches can be eliminated. “Now, we are able to sharpen punches quicker by reducing the number of setups required to grind shear angles on them,” Knepp said.

Removing Re-strike Station. Because the servo presses can be programmed with re-strike motions or to dwell at BDC, dies can be built without re-strike stations. “On a job where we would have three stations, and one would be a re-hit, now we're down to two,” Knepp said.

Kapco stamps, welds, and laser cuts millions of metal parts annually.

That reduction in toolroom maintenance is significant because of the high volume the tooling team deals with. “When we launch a new program with our customers, we might have more than 100 dies that we need to build in a matter of just a few months. That means we need to highly leverage our in-house team and outside tool network,” Knepp said.

Training. The pressroom faced training challenges in transitioning from programming mechanical presses to servo presses, Knepp relayed. “Our folks had a history of knowing very well how to program a mechanical press and manage the output. Mechanical presses are programmed based on the degrees of crank revolution. For example, feed advance, pilot opening, and sensor timing would be in degrees of rotation.

“Programming timing events on a servo press is not done in degrees of rotation; it is based on slide location relative to BDC, more like the Z axis of a CNC machining center. So it was a big challenge just to get that mindset change, because our operators had so much experience with the mechanical presses.”

One way that Kapco dealt with the training challenges was to opt in for a feature that translates linear motion into circular motion. “We ended up going with an upgrade SEYI calls a virtual cam, which basically translates the linear position of the slide into virtual degrees of crank rotation. This was especially helpful when running the press in pendulum motion. Operators, via the HMI, are able to see a physical representation of where the slide is in both height from BDC and degrees of rotation. That helped. And then, once that started to sink in with folks, they really got a better understanding of how to program the press, and what programming was possible.”

Knepp said that because the slide motion of the servo presses can be moved manually with the pulse wheel on the press control, the team could really look closely at timing. “With the ability to move the slide up and down, again much like the function of a CNC machining center, you can see exactly where pilots are engaging or where the stripper starts to touch the material. You can have a more finite program than you can with most of the mechanical presses.”

Capital Expense. Servo presses are still more expensive than mechanical presses, Kenny said. “It's a factor, but we're happy with what we've been able to do on our servo presses.”

Maintaining a highly successful manufacturing company is critical to Kapco because the company’s mission is focused on influencing positive change in its community through other endeavors within the Kacmarcik Enterprises family of companies, which includes Kapco and spans organizations in the industrial, consumer and philanthropic sectors. Kapco’s success has put Kacmarcik Enterprises in a position of expansion, with the company adding businesses and organizations while also strengthening its commitment to positively impact the lives of one million people in southeastern Wisconsin every year.

Up until this year, the company’s focus on giving back had been through initiatives like Camp Hometown Heroes, which supports children who have lost a family member during military service; Camp Reunite, which works to build bonds between children and their incarcerated parent; or Kids2Kids, which works to engage community youth to give back to those who are less fortunate. However, this fall Kacmarcik Enterprises will launch the new Kacmarcik Center for Human Performance, an operation that boldly seeks to help people – both Kacmarcik Enterprises employees, members of the community, and beyond – reach their full potential through learning, education, and an effort to unbridle themselves of any preordained limitations that may have existed previously.

“Helping kids who are less fortunate by donating clothes is nice. Helping families build a connection is nice. Organizing toy drives is nice. But isn’t there more that we can do?” Kacmarcik asked. “I believe there is. And that goal of positively impacting people in a sustainable way, by helping them become the best versions of themselves—that’s really ‘our why’ as we move into the future.

“That is really what drives us as an organization,” Kacmarcik added.