'Comfortable' hydraulic presses are being used for 5-axis trimming in a magnesium casting line for lightweight steering column locks to improve operator safety and reduce fatigue.
CE Marshall, the UK market leader in the supply of automotive locking systems, has strengthened its magnesium casting line with the introduction of five, new, 160kN hydraulic presses. Health and safety was an important consideration in equipping the production cell, along with component quality and reliability. Frank Bennett, industrial engineering manager for CE Marshall stated: 'We're confident that as well as ensuring production targets are hit, our approach will simultaneously improve operator comfort and thus reduce the risk of long-term health and safety problems such as RSI.' The magnesium casting line concerned is dedicated to producing the lightweight steering column locks for the Ford Mondeo and the Jaguar X-Type.

The complex shape of the die-cast component dictates a 5-axis trimming process.

With this in mind CE Marshall wanted to make it as user friendly as possible.

For the Ford line, a production target of 3,000,000 components over 6 years translates to 10,000 trimming operations per day in a two-operator production cell.

Bennett added: 'We needed to ensure uncompromised quality and reliability for such a high-profile line, hence we chose Hare presses, which we knew could easily handle the output from the casting process, and we decided to opt for integrated actuating light guards rather than pull down mechanical ones to aid operator comfort.' The inclusion of the light guards, rather than pull down guards, will make the job much less physically demanding for operators on this busy production line.

With 10,000 operations required in order to produce 2,000 components a day, the light guard equipped presses will eliminate the manual strain of repetitively pulling down the mechanical guards, as operators will only need to initiate the press cycle with a push button control panel, or through the guard's self actuating setting.

The new hydraulic presses replace a suite of Hare presses which have served CE Marshall since 1970.

The new 25HP presses, which will be limited to 160kN for this application, are dedicated to the production of a specific component, however they will also provide a cost-effective migration path for future applications as the production cell can be easily retooled for other steering lock applications once the output for the current models declines.

Mark Hull, sales and marketing director for PJ Hare added: 'By opting for a flexible press and tooling solution CE Marshall will save considerably when they start up a new line, as they will only need to engineer new tooling.

In a competitive global economy, for a company with an outstanding reputation for the design and manufacture of vehicle locking systems, the presses will provide a firm and flexible foundation for future projects.'