Willbanks Metals Inc. is one of the biggest service centers in the southwest. It’s also one of few companies in the area that offers the huge array of value-added services it does. ISO-certified and specializing in heavy carbon products and first-stage fabrication, Willbanks is at the top of its game.
Customers rely on the company for its raw material offerings, which include steel sheet in a variety of sizes; steel plate in more than nine grades and 100 sizes; and structural steel in angle, channel, beam, pipe, tubing, flat bar and rebar. Customers also count on the company for its fabrication services, which includes plate and sheet leveling, flat and structural laser cutting, plasma and oxyfuel cutting, CNC drilling, plate rolling, saw cutting, forming (up to 24-ft. in length) and subassembly welding.
If customers need it, Willbanks will rise to the occasion. Danny Houston, Willbanks product manager for fabrication services, explains how important customer satisfaction is in the company’s decision-making process.
“This year marks Willbanks’ 50th year in business,” he says. “Since day one, the end goal with any high-quality equipment investment has been to provide customers with the highest quality product possible.”
Incremental investments
Over the years, a growing number of Willbanks’ customers are looking for value-added services. So recently, the company invested in two state-of-the-art tube and pipe fiber laser cutting systems from Mazak Optonics Corp., allowing Willbanks to better process a range of material, including rectangular, square, channel, wide flange, angle and flat bar. Backed with sophisticated software, the tube lasers can perform intricate profile cutting in steel, aluminum and galvanized steel as well as tapping, miter, stitch and bevel cutting – delivering on the one-stop-shopping experience customers need and appreciate.
But it wasn’t always like that, of course. When the company first opened its doors, it had one shear and one press brake. A few years later, Willbanks invested in a de-coil line to provide customers cut-to-length sheet and plate, and then a few years after that, it added structural products to the mix.
With a keen understanding of what it takes to keep customers coming back, Willbanks continued to expand its equipment mix and invested in powerful software and automation to further streamline operations. Considering the range of upgrades that are added year after year, the sky is the limit for what the service center will look like tomorrow.
That last line is essentially what Houston recently proclaimed to his bosses, Eric and Ryan Letz, grandsons of the original founders. Compared to the company’s first year in 1974, things look vastly different.
“I told our owners at the end of 2023 that I couldn’t imagine what 2024 would look like,” he says. “We had recently built a new facility to house our roll and weld shop and our Redbud cut-to-length line, and now we have the tube lasers and are looking at investing in robotic welding. We’re constantly striving to stay on the frontline when it comes to reinvesting in the company and staying up to date on what our customers need to grow their businesses.”
Cutting control
The two tube and pipe lasers purchased by Willbanks are both formidable machines. The FG-220 fiber laser machine, which Houston refers to as the small one, is anything but. The rugged machine has a rigid construction with a cast frame to handle the full range of tube and pipe and structural material processed by the company, including round, square, rectangular and triangular products as well as I and H beams, angle iron and additional user-defined shapes. The FG-220’s four-chuck system supports fine-precision 3-D cutting even for weighty materials, larger diameters and longer lengths.
The larger machine, the FG-400 NEO, can also handle the same range of tube and pipe and structural material thanks to the four-chuck system, but the NEO moniker reflects its ability for laser beam modification. The team at Willbanks can adjust the beam shape and diameter to gain even higher cutting control and precision. As different workpieces are presented to the machine, the beam will adjust accordingly to accommodate the material type and thickness.
Prior to investing in the FG-220 and FG-400 NEO, Willbanks could saw cut tube, pipe and some structural product to length. But, if customers needed beveling, profile cutting or even holes drilled into their product, Willbanks had to outsource the work.
“Back then, turnaround time for tube work could be as long as three or four weeks,” Houston says. “Regardless of how long it took, the problem was that we had no control. When we outsourced, we were at their mercy, and it usually depended on their own backlog. Today, however, if someone has a rush job, we can create a little space in between jobs. It’s great to be able to help somebody that’s in a bind.”
With the tube lasers, batch sizes are also within the company’s control. When Willbanks would outsource value-added work, there was a good chance they would be turned down if a batch size was too small.
“I would tell them that we needed profiles cut into 100 pieces, but more often than not, they weren’t interested in something that small,” he explains. “Now that we have the lasers, we understand the work involved programming and setting up a job, so we get why they might have passed on the work. If you’re not setting it up to run high volume, you’re not really making any money.
“But, we want our customers to think of us as a partner,” he adds. “It’s no different from us prioritizing our customers’ rush jobs. If they need a smaller batch size, we’re happy to help.”
In fact, Houston says the goal is for 75 percent of the tube laser work to be repetitive, large-batch orders, which leaves plenty of open capacity for smaller batch orders.
Cruising speed
When Willbanks invested in the first of its two tube lasers, the FG-220, there was only one other company in the area that offered tube laser work. But since then, the number has grown.
“It seems like a few companies have noticed that there was an unfulfilled need in the area,” Houston says, “so now there are four companies in the Dallas Ft. Worth metroplex that offer this work.”
Fortunately, the team at Willbanks had a bit of a head start. Not only did the company already have flat-sheet laser cutting experience, but they also had the support of Mazak.
“We’ve had the tube lasers for about two years, but we’re still learning,” he says. “Mazak was on-site for training after both lasers were installed. They were here for a long time, especially after the first one was installed. After the second one was installed, we had them come back for additional training and to work with the programmers and operators, but after they left, we could call them anytime.
“They were so great to work with and bent over backwards to give us additional help, if we needed it,” he adds. “They did such a great job training, though, that I don’t think we’ve reached out to them for six months or more. Actually, I bet it’s been a year. We’ve been off the ground and running for a while now.”
The learning curve for bringing a pair of tube lasers in-house isn’t exclusive to the machine’s operation, though. For a large service center like Willbanks, the sales team wasn’t necessarily accustomed to selling anything but steel off the shelf. Like the machine operators, though, Willbanks sales team is getting comfortable with the new offerings.
“When we purchased the lasers, there wasn’t anyone in sales that had ever sold this type of product before,” Houston says. “We learned from ground zero, but we’re cruising now. It’s been a productive journey for all of us.”
Considering the local demand plus the success Willbanks has had since entering the world of tube laser cutting, company leadership is looking at adding additional machines in the future. At this rate, Houston can’t wait to see what the company will look like in 2025 and beyond.
