Mecolpress used presses
Preserve the technology with the experience and the reliability of the original manufacturer.
Mecolpress is manufacturing presses since more than 45 years, using its competence in the shape forming technology to serve the need of the customers.
The Mecolpress presses maintain value and quality in the years and are for this reason highly requested in the used machinery market as well.
The quality of the originally employed materials and the perfect knowledge of the product that only Mecolpress as original manufacturer has, allows to re-offer these machines to the customers after a full overhauling, with a warranty coverage equal to that of new machines.
The used Mecolpress presses offer a renewed productive capacity thanks to the deep rebuilding that is carried out in the workshops of the manufacturer where, having direct access to all original drawings and projects, the machines are totally disassembled, overhauled and reassembled with components and spares parts as would be used for producing a new machine.
The presses are, as a matter of fact, fully taken apart, every single screw and component removed, the structure is thoroughly cleaned and carefully checked, and mkachined on the milling center to prepare the seat for the new components, like the automation.
On the Mecolpress used presses is of course possible, according to the requirements of each customer, to add brand new accessories and automation like loading and unloading arms, die quick change systems, electronic process-control equipment to have a press that is perfectly up-to-date with today productive needs.
The on-board circuits and the electrical cabinet, the programmable controller, the pneumatic and hydraulic circuits are always 100% re-made, only with new components, of the most modern production.
The Mecolpress used presses are offering exactly the same characteristics of modernity and efficacy for which the new presses are designed, thanks to the technicians’ work, verifying the functioning both on mechanical and on software level, including the possibilities to integrate the machine with other units of the forging line, like the furnace.
The availability of Mecolpress used presses is updated periodically. Follow this topic on our journal The shape-forming technology and ask to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest used presses offers and be informed about the technological news.
Forging simulation
Mecolpress sells turn-key forging plants.
This means to offer to the customer not only reliable and innovative machines, but competence on the forging product and process as well: the forging line has to work regularly, respecting the productivity level and granting stable quality. During the proposal phase, the careful evaluation of the parts to be forged is always a crucial element.
Traditionally, this activity was limited to the knowledge acquired thanks to many years of experience of a few key persons, so the evaluation of the parts was based on their “memory”, trying to remember the difficulties or solution identified in the past on similar parts. Precise technical parameters and data were seldom available and recorded, and therefore the surprises during the dies real tests were very frequent, in particular the forging forces were unknown and heavily influencing the final acceptance test of the machine.
Since the work flow programming is becoming more and more important to respect the planned delivery time and, at the end, to match the yearly turnover goals, the possibility to precisely foresee and plan the final activities of the forging line manufacturing is a key factor. Mecolpress since already five years use a hot forging simulation software that allows to analyse in the technical office the flow of the material in the die, and in this way to carry out a “virtual pre-acceptance” of the forging equipment. The goal is to anticipate as much as possible the forging difficulties and, to a higher level, to share among a wider number of persons and departments, the forging process knowledge: the aim is to go from “workshop expert man” to “forging mathematics”. For the sales department as well, this methodology brings clear advantages: the possibility to demonstrate in a transparent and easy-to-understand way the technical reasons on which the die design and identification of the suitable machine are based, is often a winning element to involve the customer in the project definition and in the last phases of the negotiation.
Usually the choice of the machine and the die design phases respect a standard sequence of steps:
- first, the customers provide us with the drawings of the forged and/or of the machined part,
- the Mecolpress sales personnel choose the most difficult or doubt ones and give these to the technical office.
- From this moment onward, subsequent FEM analysis are carried out, eventually suggesting as well to the customer modifications of details of the part, to reach the result of a forged piece that satisfy the (final) customer requirements and can be forged without defects thanks to the Mecolpress technology.
- The forging simulation software has been programmed with the Mecolpress machines specific dynamic characteristics and grant therefore highly reliable results.
After the die has been manufactured, the real forging phases in the production departments start.
Tthe first thing to do is to share the project parameters and machine program data between the technical office and the dies test department.
It is now that it is essential to understand if, and eventually how, the real behaviour of the material is deviating from the expected path, and to this extent the hydraulic forging machines have a special production cycle called “simulation steps” to produce several parts with pre-programmed partial completion steps, in particular with different cores penetration depths.
If this process is well managed and used, it easily lead to verify what foreseen in the computerized simulation, and also to identify the source of defects that might be found later in the finished parts, even in areas that are not easy to be seen at first sight.
Once the dies have been successfully tested in the production dept., the customer participate to the forging line final acceptance and can examine the forging process as proposed in the offer and agreed in the order.
To have anticipated the analysis of the piece and to share the forging process knowledge among the engineers of the technical office has reduced the variability of the length of the real tests duration and has brought to a much more precise and reliable calculation of the lead time of the machine in general.
Mecolpress World Tour
Mecolpress exibithion
Mecolpress is active every year in sharing its expertise with the most important markets in the world.
In 2016 the new models of mechanical and hydraulic presses were presented, which have made the Mecolpress range evolve towards a higher integration of the production phases aimed at the highest efficiency and effectiveness of the work centers.
The Mecolpress presses were presented almost everywhere in the world at the most important events in the sector, as shown in the following illustration.
2017 is characterized by two even more important events: the two-year EMO fair that after the 2015 Milan event returns to Germany in Hannover and the presentation of a great novelty in the Mecolpress product line, which crowns almost fifty years of research and innovation with a family of new generation presses.
The 2017 fair program on the date is shown below.
Metalloobrabotka (Moscow) – 15-19 May 2017 – Pavilion 2 Hall 3 Booth 23B45
EMO Hannover (Germany) – 18-23 September 2017
Korea Metal week (Kintex) – 24-27 October 2017
Flexible machine
In the industry, in the last ten years, pushed from the automotive sector, new production methodologies according to the Lean concept are becoming more and more common: in particular, companies that can be competitive on small production batches (producing only what is necessary) instead of manufacturing high quantities at low prices, with the risk of keeping high stock levels, are rewarded with success.
If in the automotive sector this method is since longer time a consolidated strategy, in the HVAC and sanitary industry this tendency has spread out slowly and in a non standardized way, mainly due to the high number of small sub suppliers for hot forged components.
From the bigger players the urgency toward the machine manufacturers is in any case very evident: more than high-productivity equipment, are the machines that can grant very fast set-up and extremely short production change-over time the most requested units.
The second must of the “Lean” work methodology is the zeroing of the waste and dispersions, or in other words, of the useless productions because of defected parts.
To this goal, the most requested ability of the machine is the always deeper control of the forging process: the machine must be able to collect, read and control as many as possible forging parameters, which are crucial for getting a stable-quality output. The machine must as well record these parameters, first to carry out statistical evaluations on the recurrence of deviations from the set standards, and second to allow to conduct analysis (at least at batch level, since the products are not singularly marked and identified) even on later stages, in case of customer complaints.
Mecolpress has in the production program a series of forging presses that are fulfilling in total the above-mentioned requirements:
the ME hydraulic presses range.
The hydraulic presses are designed to reduce the batch change time.
Hydraulic Presses – Parameters
The machine can control several process parameters and through these can manage the logic of defect pieces or generate statistical analysis with the recorder values.
The most important parameters are:
- Temperature of the billets to be loaded: a stable temperature of the billets grant a a constant forging quality and has direct influence on all other forging parameters.
- Coring punches penetration time: it is a good marker of the correct execution of the forging process, being directly connected to the energy required by the piece during the whole penetration stroke.
- Punches real penetration force: gives information similar to the coring punches penetration time, and is influenced by the same parameters.
- Final position reached by each punch: it is the most important parameter to judge if a piece is good or must be scrapped. Excess or lack of material are actually influencing this position, as well as loaded billet with not-correct temperature.
The ME Series machines have all features to be competitive in a controlled, modern forging plant, and perform best on medium and small production batches. These machines can be equipped with gas, or even better with induction furnaces, and with these are suitable to forge diversified materials: brass, aluminium, steel, copper, titanium. As an optional, dies thermoregulation units can be integrated with the machine.
Hydraulic Presses Mecolpress
Hydraulic presses are, by their nature, slightly slower than mechanical units of equal strength but have been designed to reduce batch change time. In particular, the system is equipped with the following features:
- Detection of the piece unloaded by means of piece weighing: a sensitive cell housed on the unloading arm weighs the molded pieces and discriminates if the ejection operation has been successful. The system is simple, robust and allows to set the correct weight value for each piece according to the recipe. No adjustments or cleaning is necessary for photosensitive elements.
- Automatic adjustment of the penetration depth punches also during forging: changing the drilling depth is not a problem, a hydraulic system controlled by an encoder allows the centesimal adjustment of the position of the punches.
- Change dies and punches in a single automatic package: the fixed drilling tool makes it possible to change die and punches in a single operation, the machine automatically cuts the dies and inserts the pins.
- Heating of mdies and external punches in shade with respect to the production: being able to change dies and punches in automatic allows to heat them during the forging operations carried out by means of hydraulic presses, that is in shade with respect to production time. This feature saves more than half an hour for each die change.
- Adjustment of the pressing force of each press and of each individual punch: the press and each individual punch have adjustable forces and speeds within wide margins, this allows to find the correct motion law for each material and for each die.
- Detection of the force exerted by each individual punch for pin damage detection: load cells in the pins provide for the detection of the real force exerted by the punch. This makes it possible to detect piece scraps due, for example, to the punch break, or allows adjustment of the punch energy in order to minimize machine consumption.
The technology of the shape
The importance of the shape in the industrial applications
The hydraulic presses manufactured by Mecolpress are able to produce extremely high precision parts, that fully respect the characteristics of the shape originally thought by the designers. This allows to create products of very high complexity like the hydrogen-powered car, that is based on components with the lowest tolerances and on shapes that match each other with highest precision.
Auto ad idrogeno secondo l’interpretazione di Aston Martin (www.astonmartin.com/media)
The hot forging of materials allows, more than any other technology, to obtain perfect shapes and with high resistance, that can be employed in excellence productions.
Mecolpress is a leader in the manufacturing of mechanical and hydraulic presses as well as in the consulting services to use the hot forging technologies for the precision of the shape.
What would be of the technological progress without the shape technologies?
The history of the mankind shows that the research of always better performing and innovative solutions has lead to an accurate care of the details in the production of a perfect shape, in the mechanic industry as well as in the hydraulic, medical technic and building sector ones.
The Shape Forming Technology is also the title of this permanent blog, that Mecolpress issues and updates with the purpose to highlight the need of research and investments for the well-being of the people.
The mechanic of Mecolpress is dedicated to the shape forming technology to provide its customers with the abilities of producing in an always more precise and efficient way.
Follow us on internet facebook LinkedIn