Electric Shakers Stamp Out Downtime

With new electric shakers in place, the presses in this stamping plant keep on running and downtime is now a rare concern.

For over 50 years, Radar Industries (Warren, MI) has provided high tech metal forming, production design and engineering, and value added services to diverse industries that include automotive, heavy truck, recreation and the appliance industries. The family owned business has 225+ employees that operate multiple facilities centrally located in the heart of the automotive industry, as well as a subsidiary in Mexico and noteworthy relationships along the Pacific Rim and Eastern Europe.

The stamping capabilities of the company includes twin 2200 ton Schuler presses along with a range of presses from 300 tons to 2200 tons that can process ultra high strength steels, dual phase and trip steels, high carbon and even stainless and aluminum steels.

Like any maintenance supervisor at a busy stamping plant, 30-year manufacturing veteran Mike DeWitt’s goal at Radar Industries is to keep his presses up and running. With per-press downtime costing $250 to $1000 per hour, keeping production running is critical to profitability. So, when the pneumatic shakers used to move scrap away from Radar’s presses began to cause downtimes of 50 percent to 60 percent per shift, DeWitt knew he needed a better equipment solution.

“The reliability of the pneumatic shakers was horrendous,” explained DeWitt. “I was faced with mounting downtime costs and mountains of scrap.”

As the Warren plant explored new options, Del Butler of Magnetic Products, Inc. (MPI; Highland, MI) visited the facility and listened to DeWitt’s concerns. MPI is based in southeastern as a worldwide supplier of both magnetic and non-magnetic material handling solutions engineered with inventive magnetic equipment.

Butler suggested an electric shaker. DeWitt was immediately impressed by its design and the shaker was lent to Radar Industries. It wasn’t long before DeWitt retrofitted an electric shaker on each of the 17 presses in the company’s Michigan and Mexico plants. “These electric shakers totally eliminated the downtime issue and slashed the costs caused by our old pneumatics.”