As the forging industry’s most experienced maintenance staff and equipment operators retire, keeping legacy machines producing at full capacity is increasingly difficult. When new employees lack sufficient expertise and decades-old forging equipment breaks down the result can be very costly extended downtime. Preventative maintenance “A seasoned team may know all the ins and outs of every forging machine in a facility, but when the workers leave or retire the...

U.S.-based forging and forming equipment suppliers can optimize processes, uptime, and cost for the long haul with responsive expertise and readily available parts and service. Purchasing new forging equipment from a “low-cost” overseas supplier that offers a limited number of standard options from a catalog can be costly in the long run. In addition, in the notoriously high-impact forging industry, standard one-size-fits-all equipment often will not fit the...

Graphic Human Machine Interface (HMI) capability allows operators to see how a forging press is functioning and speeds local/remote diagnostics and troubleshooting. Although today’s forging industry is the result of more than a century of process developments, forging presses are delivering better results thanks to the capabilities of HMIs to improve production uptime and process control. A Human-Machine Interface (HMI) is a user interface or dashboard that connects...

In the aerospace manufacturing industry, Ajax/CECO/Erie Press equipment plays a large role. The equipment is utilized in a variety of fashions to bend, bond, form, and straighten metal into components like airframes, fuselages, and spars. As the largest forging equipment supplier in North America, providing service to the world, with over a century of experience in the forging industry, Ajax/CECO/Erie Press is the preferred supplier to many industries--including the...

Within aerospace manufacturing, a wide variety of heavy-duty, metal-forming, hydraulic presses with capacities of 10,000 tons or more are required to bend, form, bond, or straighten aluminum, titanium, and alloys into structures and components such as fuselages, spars, and airframes. Technical writer, Del Williams examines aerospace metal forming to provide an expert survey of the key equipment and processes, in the Aerospace Manufacturing...

 Properly managing necessary forging equipment repairs, rebuilds or remanufactures will keep the industry forging on even through the economic downturn. During the current economic slump, the forging industry, like many others have experienced great shortages and disruption of the international supply chain. This has posed great opportunities for North American forging companies to regain the share of domestic customers and shorten lead times with onshore...