Case study: GLYN BINGHAM ASSOCIATES

Atkin seals success for Glyn Bingham Associates at Klinger

With its head office in Switzerland and manufacturing plants around the world, Klinger is a highly respected gasket and seal manufacturer, and its factory in Bradford, West Yorkshire supplies the global petro-chemical sectors with a range of specialist, spiral wound gaskets which are designed to withstand pressures ranging from 150 to 2,500 lbs per square inch.

Yet this highly efficient factory functions without the production and works engineering departments traditionally associated with an operation that utilises heavy presses and associated ancillary equipment to process metal strip into precision engineered components; this is a cost effective success story which has been brought about by engineering consultancy Glyn Bingham Associates and a number of carefully chosen equipment and machinery suppliers, including Atkin Automation.

Glyn Bingham Associates is a specialised engineering consultancy which provides project management and interim management services to a growing number of manufacturers to help with issues which can include relocation, process evaluation, equipment selection and, importantly, the management of change which is often associated which such issues.

Glyn Bingham, the consultancy’s senior partner, was introduced to Klinger in 1999 through a mutual friend, since when the organisation has played an increasing important role in helping this dynamic organisation achieve a number of demanding goals.

One of the first projects undertaken by the consultancy for Klinger involved the introduction of a Atkin decoiler/recoiler which had already been selected by the previously appointed main contractor. The project was highly successful, resulting in a 75% increase in material utilisation whilst increasing the output of blanks to 50 off per minute, and a successful working relationship was established between Atkin Automation and Glyn Bingham Associates.

Three projects later Glyn Bingham Associates led the introduction of a process which has provided huge cost savings for Klinger. The company is a large user of pre-formed metal wire which needs chamfered edges, and its buying team had identified that the cost of chamfering as a subcontract process was placing a 100% premium on the material purchase cost, when compared to the slit price. If the chamfering process could be undertaken in house surely there were substantial savings to be made?

Norfolk based Atkin Automation has been manufacturing press and coil feed equipment for over 60 years, and over the last ten years it has become one of the leading suppliers of purpose designed, automated production systems for companies in a wide range of industry sectors which process metal strip into finished components. Glyn Bingham Associates approached Atkin with the concept of an automated system to undertake Klinger’s need for the precision chamfering of high volumes of metal wire and, together with the Klinger production management team, a design emerged.

The contract for the system, which consists of a 500 kg capacity coilholder with threading drive and a pneumatic safety snubber arm; a simple ‘pull through’ straightener; an edge machine section with intermediate roll drives; multiple tool stations, tip lubrication and recovery system and hydraulic introduction/retraction of tooling onto the strip edge; 500 kg motorised recoiler with heavy duty drive and pneumatic safety snubber arm and a line control system with an operator panel mounted in front of the machine section was placed at the end of 2001 and by May 2002 Klinger’s in- house chamfering line was fully operational.

“Atkin Automation was able to quickly understand what we were trying to achieve for Klinger, and we worked together to specify and design a system for what is a very specific task,” said Glyn Bingham.

He continued: “The system has proven reliable and has been capable of everything that we have asked of it, and a pay back period of less than 12 months on a six figure capital investment project has justified the belief that there were considerable cost savings to be made by making chamfering an automated in-house process.

“ Klinger is a dynamic organisation and there are a number of projects in the pipeline which will involve changing production processes. I am sure we shall work together with Atkin Automation in the future on a number of aspects of metal strip handling and processing.”