Why veteran press brake operators are invaluable to a metal fab shop

Knowledgeable press brake operators are worth their weight in gold.

While manufacturing companies and job shops continue to be on the lookout for welders, they at least know that a local vocational training institution is turning out new job candidates. The same can’t be said for press brake operators.

That’s one of the reasons that the industry has seen so much of a move toward automated tool-changing devices and robotic press brake cells in recent years. While human press brake operators provide the flexibility that any automated equipment would be hard to match, those humans are frequently all too hard to find.

What about those press brake operators still at it? They’ve seen a lot. The older ones learned with the help of drafting paper, bending tables, and rulers. The not-as-old operators likely have a foot in that world and one in the world of computer controls and laser angle verification on the formed part. The newbies in front of the press brake likely know only what training is provided to them, either by an in-house mentor or maybe a technical representative from the brake’s manufacturer.

Author: Dan Davis

Source: The Fabricator

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The fast track to fab shop productivity with advanced technologies

In today’s manufacturing world, you can’t expect the new hire to have followed the same career path as the lead press brake operator or welder with 25 years’ experience. The path isn’t as straight as it used to be.

Consider Jim Baer and Steve Thompson, press brake operators for ATECH-SEH Metal Fabricators in Buffalo, N.Y. They both participated in vocational training in high school, attending school during the day and taking night classes where they learned about sheet metal work. From there, they went to work at SEH Metal Fabricators in the late 1980s and learned on the job just how different metals reacted to being formed in a press brake. Today they try to share their combined knowledge with their co-workers, who don’t have the luxury of learning slowly at the feet of experienced mentors. They need to be productive as soon as possible because no one has an abundance of knowledgeable press brake operators, and parts still need to be processed.

Author: Dan Davis

Source: Fabricator Magazine

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The many ways that ATECH-SEH keeps earning customers’ respect

It’s not unusual for people to get a phone call out of the blue from someone who says he has a business proposition for them. It is unusual when those phone calls turn out to be a pretty good deal.

David Munschauer got that call in 1998. He was a veteran of the Buffalo, N.Y. industrial scene for the previous 20 years after being laid off as a teacher in 1978. He spent more than a decade working for Niagara Machine and Tool Works, a company founded by his great-grandfather; a shorter stint working for a metal plating house; and then several years as part owner of a manufacturer’s representative business. Over the years Munschauer had done business with one of the owners of SEH Metal Fabricators, who started as an irate customer two weeks into his job at Niagara and ended up being one of the companies that Munschauer later represented at his agency. This fabricating shop owner was the person that made the call to Munschauer.

“He called me up one day and said he wanted to sell the business,” Munschauer recalled. “I said that’s interesting and congratulated him. Then he said, ‘I’m going to sell it to you.’”

Author: Dan Davis

Source: The Fabricator

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