This page contains several reviews on how Modular Hard Die systems have helped our customers achieve their goals. These short stories are only a few of the many SOLUTIONS we have provided over the years.

Toolbox Manufacturer increases production with XimmiX dies

Kennedy Manufacturing Company was using a turret punch press to produce a family of 20 different toolbox drawer combinations. The turrets were unable to keep up with increasing run volumes and resultant bottlenecks were slowing the downstream production lines. After investigating the purchase of another turret press and coil-fed hard dies versus a low-cost. Modular tooling system, Kennedy chose modular XimmiX ® dies as their best solution. XimmiX ® offered them a very innovative method for tool change that gives them 10 minute or less change over for each job. The system also provides them with tools that are easily adaptable to design change and are reusable for all-new punching jobs.

Lighting Fixture Manufacturer uses Modular Hard Dies on entire product line

Faced with stamping out a family of new fluorescent light housings of different sizes, this user chose XimmiX ® tooling over hard dies. Decision was based on moderate volume production vs. hard die cost, number of different housings, complexity of punched features and easy die maintenance offered by XimmiX ®. Initially 15 different jobs were tooled. User has since expanded his use of the system, which now includes tooling for more than 40 different stampings. By sharing common tools among the jobs, his average tooling cost is now less than $3,500.00 each.

CNC Turrets and Lasers:

Other conventional methods for producing punched stampings include turret punch presses and lasers. While these high-tech methods will produce most of the common features associated with flat piercing and notching, their use requires the addition of technical support personnel and programmers to write the necessary CNC program codes. In turret punch presses, the work piece is gripped and moved under the turret head of the machine while the turret rotates as required to present the desired punch size. Movement of the work and rotation of the turret are CNC coordinated and controlled. Turret punch presses are good choices for short to medium production runs of primarily flat stampings. Within constrained limitations, simple forms or extrusions can be achieved but these can typically done only in the “up” direction, to prevent interference with free movement of the work as it travels across the machine table. Lasers use similar CNC technology to control movement of the work under the laser head, however lasers cannot achieve forms or extrusions of any kind. A laser can be a good solution for short run quantities and for work having large or irregular peripheral contours.

Hat Shaped Extrusion with more than 100 holes

How to punch 105 holes in a hat-shaped aluminum extrusion, when hole sizes keep changing? The user chose Adjustable series 375 dies for this “one-time only” job. Requirement was 2500 parts with .25” / 6.35 mm holes, followed by 3500 parts with .375” / 9.5 mm holes then 3500 parts with oval slots. Adjustable dies let this user punch all parts with one die, in one hit each. By simply changing standard punches and dies, he is now able to make any of the hole sizes he needs and deliver the stampings on time – and well within his $18,000.00 tooling budget. When he finishes the job, the same tools with different punches can be reused for his next application.

In Press Forming – Custom form die is added to line

A long-time customer feeding coil through Magna Die ® tooling to make several lengths of high-volume socket holders for fluorescent light fixtures, wanted to eliminate a secondary manual press brake operation by adding a ‘Z’ bend-form die to the coil line. Whistler engineers designed a modular custom form die and incorporated it into the line with only minor modifications to the existing modular tools, at a cost of only pennies per stamping.

Steel Processor moves to blanking

As a way to offer a value-added service to its customers, a steel service center recently positioned a press in its cut-to-length line. By combining modular Magna Die ® tooling with the press, the center can now offer very accurately pre-punched and notched blanks, saving their customers time and money. Since the press is in-line, the service center actually gets the punched features without any added labor cost. The press is mounted on rails and can be quickly and easily shuttled off-line to make tool changes. Since the tools are modular, they are inventoried for reuse by the center to make pre-punched flat blank stampings for several different customers.

Material stacks shrink ahead of turrets

When this job-shop stamping house took a low-volume job, it planned to use its CNC turret punch press to make a series of flat stampings. When his customer’s product sales took off, the jobber’s turrets were running 24/7 just to keep pace with the increased volumes. Whistler proposed XimmiX ® modular dies to do the job and pull him out of the hole. Within weeks after placing his order, the skids of material on the floor around the turret press began to disappear as production was quickly shifted to a long-idle punch press. Last we checked, the turrets were back running on a more normal 1-1/2 shifts and concentrating on the lower volume jobs, while the XimmiX ® dies were satisfying the customer’s increasing volume requirements in just a single shift, with excellent quality stampings delivered on time. With the frequent tendency to overload turrets, this type of situation often occurs in the typical job shop environment – much to our delight!