4 Ways the Rouselle Stamping Machine is Cranking up Production

August 6, 2015 | American Manufacturing

The Rouselle stamping machine is a manufacturing powerhouse that uses 80 tons of brute force to shape steel.Over the years, Marlin Steel has acquired numerous pieces of production automation to boost productivity. From automated wire bending robots, to an MFDC welder, to CNC press brakes, Marlin’s factory floor is filled with numerous technological marvels designed to handle a variety of specific tasks.

One machine that is helping to crank up Marlin’s productivity is the Rouselle 8SS40 Double Crank Straight Side Press.

How is this machine boosting productivity on the Marlin Steel production floor?

Here’s how:

It Makes up to 36,000 Strokes Per Shift

The primary job of a straight side press is to stamp metal forms, a process which would be painfully slow and difficult to do manually. However, the Rouselle 8SS40 can perform up to 4,500 strokes per hour, or 36,000 strokes in a single eight-hour shift.

That’s a massive number of completed metal stamping operations.

This is enough operations to allow the Rouselle to successfully prepare enough stamped, swaged, pierced, coined, or flattened metal pieces to accommodate several other Marlin Steel production lines each day.

It Eliminates Secondary Operations for the Wire Forms it Processes

Rouselle MachineUnder normal circumstances, it take an enormous amount of heat and time to reshape steel. Even after the metal is “finished” being shaped, there are usually still secondary operations to perform such as deburring, filing down the shape to make sure it is the right size, etc.

At least, this is true of manual processes for reshaping steel wire, which rely on superheating the metal to make it malleable enough for a worker to reshape it. The problem here is that it takes a long time for the metal to cool. Until it does cool off, the superheated portion of the steel could easily become deformed in shape.

Rather than relying on temperature to reshape metal, the Rouselle Straight Side Press relies on sheer force, applying up to 80 tons of force at the bottom of a stroke. This compacts the steel under the press into whatever shape is necessary without excessive heat, so the part is solid immediately after the shaping process is finished.

Even better, the press creates specific shapes with amazing regularity, minimizing the need to remove sharps and burrs from the final work piece.

This can save a massive amount of time on the production line.

How much?

Say, for example, you were to perform 3,000 swaging, piercing, or coining operations in a single hour. If your deburring process took about 15 seconds for each work piece, that would add 750 minutes of work to your process, or 12.5 hours. That’s right, an hour’s worth of manufactured parts could generate up to 12.5 extra hours of labor used if each part needed to be deburred.

By removing the need for secondary operations, Marlin’s Rouselle 8SS40 stamping machine massively cuts down on production time. This makes it easier for Marlin’s production engineers to keep to tight production deadlines and send out orders rapidly so that Marlin’s clients can more easily meet their own production timetables.

It Can Handle Several Different Types of Stamping Operations

The Rouselle can quickly switch between several different kinds of stamping operations, including:

  • Coining. Precision stamping process that uses extreme pressure to force metal to conform to a die.
  • Flattening. The Rouselle is specially-built to flatten lengths of steel wire quickly and cleanly.
  • Piercing. Rather than merely flatten a part, the Rouselle can also punch a depression or a hole into a part to accommodate specific design requirements.
  • Swaging. Instead of completely flattening a part, the Rouselle straight side press can compress a round piece of steel wire slightly at its tip, making it easier to feed the wire into a tube or other opening.

Because the Rouselle can quickly switch between these different operations, it is able to be used for multiple production lines with a minimal amount of downtime for retooling. This, in turn, allows Marlin’s different production teams to make use of the Rouselle press more easily so that they can all meet their production deadlines.

With this and many other modern wonders of factory automation, Marlin Steel is equipped to help clients meet their own production deadlines with timely custom metal form deliveries. See how Marlin helped other clients meet tough production challenges by checking out the case studies at the link below:

Marlin Steel Case Studies