Application Tool

Application Tool

Mate tooling

Adding a single application-specific tool to a punch press fabricating project can have a huge impact on part cost. But it often takes insight into all of the operations involved in the fabricating process to calculate the true bottom line benefits that justify its purchase and use.

Bayview Metals is an ISO 9001:2000 certified precision sheet metal fabricator serving the electronics and military industries where competition is keen and innovation is required to stay in the race for new part projects. With 27 employees, everyone is expected to make contributions to keep the company competitive. In the punching area, Richardson and his fellow employees do it by finding new ways to reduce punch press cycle time and eliminate secondary operations. As a longtime user of Mate tooling, Richardson regularly checks with Peter Visser, Mate sales engineer, on new tools and ideas for improving fabricating operations. When seeing how the shields needed a secondary operation to remove the micro joint burrs, Visser suggested Mate's EasySnap tooling as a way to eliminate the burrs.

EasySnap does the work of a conventional parting tool without actually separating the part from the sheet. EasySnap partially slits the part edges, leaving just enough material to hold the part in the sheet. Once the entire sheet is punched and removed from the press, individual parts can be quickly and easily snapped apart by hand and without any tools. Part edges are consistently clean and there are no burrs or other unwanted "pips" such as those left by the micro joints, said Mate.

The EasySnap tool operates differently than a standard parting tool. EasySnap has a linear V-line stencil machined onto the face of the upper and lower tools. As the tools penetrate the sheet, they create a line of weakness (a snap line) in the upper and lower surfaces of the sheet material. Once the outer shape of the part is punched, the part can be quickly and easily bent and snapped loose from the rest of the sheet.

The continuous nature of the EasySnap tool design is intended to allow the length of the snap-line up to a maximum suggested length of 12-inches (300mm). The actual depth of the tool penetration and force required to bend and snap the part loose is dependent on the ductility and thickness of the material being punched. For Bayview Metals' 0.033-inch (.084 mm) thick steel application, the EasySnap tool was suitable.

Richardson recognized an additional benefit using the Easy Snap tool. It allowed him to add another row of parts to each sheet by eliminating the 0.250-inch (6.35 mm) of scrap left between parts using the conventional parting tool. Instead of 24 parts per sheet (four rows of six parts), Richardson could punch 28 parts per sheet (four rows of seven parts) in a 33- x 48-inch (838.2 x 1219.2 mm) steel sheet. Each part measured 7.408- x 6.218-inch (188.16 x 157.94 mm). With more parts and less scrap per sheet, the material savings alone were very significant. On a typical part run of 5,000 parts, Richardson reported material savings amounted to approximately 20 percent. Because the Mate Easy Snap is application specific, Richardson had to convince himself and management that the tool would indeed effect measurable savings beyond paying for the tool itself. That's where his tooling insight was important. He was able to quickly visualize the true potential beyond the scrap reduction in reduced cycle time improvement and the elimination of secondary operations to justify the tooling purchase and process change.

What is most significant about Bayview Metal's use of Mate's special application tooling is that productivity has been increased dramatically without having to add new punch presses.

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How do I get the Java compiler and run Java application tools to appear on Textpad?

I downloaded the Vista 64 bit software for Java SDK, and I'm pretty sure it installed JRE as well. However, when I open up Textpad and type in my Java code, and go up to compile it, there's no option to do so under tools. Please help.

It would appear you have not set the Path nor the Classpath for Java, so Textpad can find java, javac and the source files you have.

For setting the path, have a look at these websites:

http://www.cs.colostate.edu/helpdocs/JavaPaths.html

http://www.cs.colostate.edu/helpdocs/JavaPaths.html#XP

For the classpath, have a look at these websites:

http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~arnoldyl/NetBeansTutorials/Setting-Classpath.html

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/tools/windows/classpath.html

After you have set both the path and classpath, have a look at this page

http://forums.textpad.com/viewtopic.php?t=10105&highlight=java