SlugMagic™ Dies and Cooperation
Solve Tough Tooling Application

Tooling Applications

The cooperative process started with a call from David Ordway at Farwest Steel Corporation. He wanted to know if Whitney’s new SlugMagic Dies really worked.

Farwest Steel, a multi-plant plate, rebar and structural service center headquartered in Eugene, Oregon, was faced with a slug pulling problem when running some shot blasted, oiled 1/2" A36 plate with a “slightly different” chemistry, and punching obround holes. Something about the steel created more slug pulling than normal. Unfortunately, Farwest had purchased a large amount of this steel at a very good price and needed to use it.

A Whitney Process Improvement Team including Operator Mark Revell, Sales Staff Member Jeff Laing and Whitney Programmer David Ordway, work together to understand the needs and priorities of the Team and its machine. The team, involved in this effort, was developed to continually monitor and improve utilization of the Whitney 661 punch/plasma fabricating center.

The Process Improvement Team agreed to contact Whitney. Ordway called Whitney Service and explained the problem and the urgency of quickly finding a solution. Farwest needed to provide a quality, cost efficient part from this troublesome A36 for a customer the company had just pulled on-board.

“I called Whitney because we see lots of flyers come across our desk and we don’t know which products really work,” explains Ordway, Farwest’s part programming and Whitney specialist and member of the Farwest Whitney Process Improvement Team. “We’d tried some of the slug-holding dies from a different company and they didn’t work.”

Since the call wasn’t a standard order, it was transferred to Mike Dixon, Business Development Manager. This began a joint effort between the Farwest team and Whitney to eliminate the slug-pulling problem.

The first attempt at a fix was a set of Whitney’s new SlugMagic™ S3 dies which had never failed to prevent slug pulling in 1/2" material—including the shot blasted and oiled variety. During the development of the SlugMagic Dies Whitney leveraged its position as the machine builder to determine the optimal pinch point for Whitney machines. This explains why the SlugMagic products work in Whitney machine tools when other dies may not.

Understanding the need for quick success, the set of dies were produced and over-nighted to Farwest the same day as the call. Results were a slight improvement over the standard straight dies, but not the solution needed. This was quite alarming to the engineering staff at Whitney.

“I could see the mechanics of what was happening,” says Ordway. “We investigated where the slug was being retained, how deeply it was being held, and how easy it came out of the die. We noticed that the slugs causing the problem had a scraped top from the plate pulling across them.”

Ordway’s thought was that a lower pinch point on the SlugMagic die might provide enough extra slug pull prevention. So Farwest and Whitney worked together to give Ordway’s recommendation a try.

Another set of SlugMagic dies (S4 for use in material up to 3/4") with the lower pinch point—were overnighted to Farwest. The shorter distance from the bottom of the die to the pinch point worked. Farwest’s fabricating shop was able to satisfy the expectations of their sales department, their management, and most importantly, their customer.

“The ability to have my tool supplier listen to my technical opinion is very important to me. Sometimes a solution to a problem can’t be bought off the shelf and you have to reinvent the wheel.” Ordway believes that the willingness to listen and cooperate on a technical problem “is pretty rare in this business.”

He also finds value in being able to discuss the technical aspects of the entire 661 punch/plasma machine when faced with an unusual application or material. But whether an easy job or a challenge, Whitney punches and dies are the only tools used in Farwest’s 661…per operator preference.

“Whitney is the supplier of our machine so I feel confident about the tooling always matching and being made with the machine in mind. We always get good service—with one day turn-around when we need it. When we have a problem, I sense an urgency in your voices and that makes all the difference in the world. Our problem becomes Whitney’s problem.”