Metal Fabrication Case Study – Automotive Aftermarket Metal Brackets

Metal Fabrication Case Study

Customer:  Automotive Aftermarket

Product:  1/4 Plate Metal Bracket

Type of Fabrication:  Laser Cutting, Press Brake Metal Forming, Powder Coating

Problem:  Taking a new design from the PPAP to production

Noble Industries solution:

Noble Industries has an automotive aftermarket customer that will periodically change the design of one of their metal brackets based on the vehicle design changes.  As an ISO 9001:2008 metal fabricator, when a design change is made, we will provide the customer with test metal parts and their PPAP documentation.  After the customer tests the brackets they will place an initial supply of the new custom metal bracket.  For this particular metal bracket we made 3 test brackets.

Once the customer completed their testing they placed an initial production order of 750.  This specific part is made out of HRPO (Hot Rolled Pickled & Oiled) .25 X 60 X 120 sheet metal.  This material is also known as HRPO ¼ plate material.   Purchasing order sheet metal in the size of 60 inches by 120 inches because that is the sheet size for our Mazak Lasers.  To produce these parts, we have estimated that laser cutting will be performed at 35 parts an hour with 1 set up.  Our Virtek will inspect the first article part before the remaining 749 are laser cut.  After the parts are laser cut, the job folder and flat parts will go to the Press Brake area for metal forming.

We have estimated that the set up for the press brake will take 1 hour and 15 minutes.  Once the press brake is set up with tooling to form the parts, an operator should be able to form parts at 40 parts an hour.  Once the forming is complete, the parts are sent to the powder coating staging area.  These particular parts are powder coated black and we can powder coat 1200 of these parts an hour so 750 will take about 38 minutes.  Our powder coating line runs continuously so once these parts are racked, the powder coating operator will start racking other parts that will be powder coated using the same black powder.

Since the PPAP parts were made in April of 2012, Noble Industries has fabricated and shipped a total quantity of 2,500 of this metal bracket.  For this particular customer we make many different brackets and other parts and ship weekly production releases of 100 to 2500 metal brackets based on the customer’s requirements for their assemblies.

For more information about metal fabrication, contact Brenda Snyder at 317-773-1926.