Press repair is a critical part of stamping – perhaps more so than any other fabrication process. If a catastrophic failure occurs, it can take weeks or months to get the press up and running again. Even more general repairs can take just as long.
Knowing about the stamping press repair process, the speed at which it needs to happen and the value of preventive maintenance, Joe Hibner, founder and president of American Press Services, discussed press repair and his company’s approach to it with the team at Stamping Productivity. Along the way, he gave advice on best repair practices – and some good business advice, too.
STP: First, what spurred you to form American Press Services?
Hibner: I started as a field service technician for one of the stamping press OEMs and, eventually, I was promoted to project engineer. I then moved on to a different OEM and went into project management where I was a part of retrofits and modernization projects for their Big Three automotive customers.
Over those 10 years, I received a lot of feedback from customers and from the service technicians themselves. And it was consistent – technicians were coming unprepared and, too often, answers were having to come from overseas. Technicians were finding themselves hung up in one spot instead of moving on to the next job. The U.S.-based technical support side of the OEM service groups was definitely lacking. But the OEMs had a corner on the market, and in a lot of ways, customers felt like they didn’t have any other options.
To eliminate those problems, I decided to open a full-service business to support the stamping industry’s inspection, repair and refurbishment needs. The hope was that it would lead to happy technicians and customers. So I started American Press Services to be a faster, more cost-efficient, more resourceful option.
We took an emergency preparedness approach to our technicians. We made sure their trucks were equipped with every tool they could possibly need so that when they responded to a call, no matter the scope, we provided immediate service and support.
Another thing that makes us unique is that we work on all brands and types of presses so we can be a one-stop shop for our customers for all things stamping and metal forming. We service the entire United States.
What are some common repairs performed on stamping presses?
Mechanical failures are the big one, such as crankshafts and driveshafts. We do a lot of emergency repairs to get presses back up and running.
As an example, we’re in the middle of a job for a Tier 1 automotive supplier that experienced a driveshaft bearing failure, which requires a complete drivetrain disassembly. To get them back up and running, we’re machining the broken parts and doing the bearing replacement.
Another press we’re repairing had a bearing failure in a flywheel, but turns out, the bearing is obsolete – it hasn’t been manufactured in years. We have to re-engineer it and machine it so it can accept a bearing that’s commonly available.
Another huge part of press repair are the structural cracks found in the machine. A lot of presses predate today’s high-tensile strength steel, so new steel is run through old presses. Those presses weren’t engineered to take the beating that newer steel puts them through; something has to give, and it’s going to be the press.
Crack repairs require a welding process unique to presses. The repairs can’t just be turned over to a run-of-the-mill weld shop. We know where and how the cracks were formed. We have an internally engineered process that goes into how to repair them. That’s unique to us and sets us apart; welding is its own division here.
We also do rebuilds where a system or subsystems of a press have a large number of worn components that are plaguing production, possibly affecting part quality. We bring everything back to specification.
And with refurbishing, we make everything like new again. For that, we typically bring the press into our shop, depending on size, disassemble it and go over all the components to make them look like new. We can and do perform many improvements. Technology has come a long way since some of these presses were built in the 1950s and 1960s. Heat-treated materials, machining processes and achieving tighter tolerances have all greatly improved. It’s just applying today’s technology to old parts.
On the control side, we do a lot of modernization. Some of the major manufacturers out there, like Wintriss and Link, make really nice packages that we overlay. We like it because we can standardize everything for customers that have, say, three or four different types of machines in their shop. Now, one operator can run all these presses – and with only one series of training.
What about helping prevent press downtime?
A large part of our business is performing inspections. I consider how we handle inspections a crowning achievement of ours. We create a maintenance action plan after inspecting a press or presses, which can take a couple months. The plan takes all the inspection findings and prioritizes recommendations – high-priority safety risks, low-priority maintenance items, for example. We lay everything out for them – the priorities and a bit of a forecast – this is what could happen and this is how long we think you have.
We also develop spare parts lists for anything critical that customers should keep on hand at all times. And we build to-do lists for customers to perform in between our audits. This is all part of the inspection package.
In today’s world, people can struggle with proactive maintenance, so inspections are something that we push. The advice I give to every customer is to pursue press inspections at regular intervals. It’s the only way to really gain an insight into the health of the machine. We start them off by moving from reactive to proactive, and then we can get to preventative, which is the ultimate goal.
This allows customers to quickly budget for the year, knowing what’s coming up immediately and what can be planned for later. For instance, shops that shut down in July and December, like in automotive, can identify a failing part early in the year and order a replacement to have in time for the next available shutdown.
It can be hard, though. Some customers are in what I call the “death cycle” with their machinery. Once they get into a reactive phase, it becomes very difficult to get out of it. It becomes a bit of a whack-a-mole game. They fix one thing, another thing breaks, then another thing breaks. Finally, they get to a place where it’s breaking so often they can’t ever stop running it. They have to run it 24/7 just to catch up, which is even harder on the press. I say, bite the bullet and get the inspection done.
One technology we have that helps with inspections and service is new field service software, which puts us ahead of the curve in press repair. Most technicians still do their work on pen and paper or maybe an Excel sheet.
We worked with a software company to develop an app and QR code system. We put a QR code on every press that we work on, and the information is logged into our database. Customers can access the database through the QR code to schedule service, report the machine down, see the inspection and repair history, and see open quotes for repair. Our technicians also scan the QR code and start their work order. They can interface with the customer and deliver live service reports immediately.
The industry’s standard turnaround time is at least a week to get these reports to the customer, so it’s pretty cutting edge. We started using the system and building the database last year and have received overwhelmingly positive responses.
How do you determine that a press can’t be repaired?
We try not to make that suggestion because we’re in the repair business [laughs], but it becomes a point of feasibility of what the press is worth. There are a lot of factors that go into whether a press should be scrapped or not when the repair is too big. One is if the customer has another machine they can run the contract on. It can be a month’s long process or longer to create a foundation, get a new press in and get it running.
How long can repairs and rebuilds take? What is your approach to reducing the time frame?
Obviously, it’s wide ranging. Sometimes, it’s just a few hours to chase down a broken wire or something small. In other cases, a repair can take a few months. A lot of press manufacturers don’t exist anymore, but their presses do, so it’s very hard to find parts. We do our own reverse engineering and machining of parts in-house.
We did a complete crown overhaul on a on 1,000-ton press recently that had a catastrophic failure – the intermediate gears in the drivetrain cracked in half. It took somewhere between 12 and 16 weeks just to make the parts plus another two or three weeks of disassembly and reassembly on top of that.
Something we learned during the pandemic was that working with the OEMs based overseas wasn’t all that difficult for customers – they still might be looking at same number of weeks for a part. But during the pandemic, it was a different story – there were people waiting 60 weeks for that part. All the sudden, there was a very large hole.
As a result, during that same time, American Press Services developed a pretty solid network of regional and local machine shops that we can coordinate with for anything that we can’t do in-house. We worked with these companies to provide solutions and parts back in that 10- to 12-week lead time.
Customers recognized that we could deliver in a fourth or fifth of the time it was taking the OEMs and, typically, for half the cost. They also found our quality matched the OEMs.
When I named American Press Services, I did it very purposefully. We wanted customers to know that there is a true domestic solution. We have an office of people here in the United States fully capable of solving their issues without the back and forth between time zones. We pride ourselves for being stateside and being able to help our customers.
