Metal stamping specialist invests £600,000 in Japanese technology

Brandauer has invested £600,000 on a high-speed press as part of a three-year plan to boost its capacity and provide additional production flexibility.

Established in Birmingham in 1862, Brandauer is one of the largest contract presswork and stampings companies in Europe and produces millions of high tolerance metal pressings and stampings every week for customers in the plumbing, automotive, domestic products, electrical, medical and renewables sectors.

In May the company announced a £1.5m export boost after securing a string of orders from the Netherlands, the US and, for the first time, Israel.

The contracts helped Brandauer, which employs 67 people, increase sales to £9.2m.

The Yamada Dobby NXT 80XL high-speed press will allow the company, which recently secured a Queen’s Award for International Trade, to capitalise on 20% growth over the last 12 months.

“The technology gives us patented repeatability on quality and a 100% reduction in press setting time that frees up manufacturing space to take on new contract wins in the plumbing sector, automotive motor laminations and fuel cells,” the company said.

This machine is the first to be purchased from the Japanese-based press specialist and is part of a £2m modernisation of Brandauer’s Birmingham facility.

It also includes a new GF wire cut EDM machine, two Andmar surface grinders and an OGP Smartscope Vantage 250 to help with quality inspection.

Don Walters, Operations Manager at Brandauer, commented: “We first came across the press at Blechexpo and were impressed with what we saw in terms of its speed, the repeatable quality and how user friendly it appeared.

“Our visit to its showroom in Italy gave us the chance to see the Yamada in all of its glory and we worked with its experts to configure the machine so it delivers the accuracy and performance we were looking to achieve.”

The machine workd on components that use material ranging in thickness from 0.2 to 0.8mm and the 1.5m bed is the largest the company currently has available and it can operate at speeds of between 100 and 800 strokes per minute.

Karl Jeavons, Press Shop Team Leader at Brandauer, said: “The quality is second to none and we run off thousands and thousands of parts every day, thanks in part to the double link motion mechanism that delivers Yamada’s patented repeatability, while also helping to prolong the life of the tool.

“This massively frees up resource, giving us the ability to move our engineers on to different projects so that we can run jobs simultaneously.”

Following the installation of the Yamada Dobby NXT 80XL, Brandauer has now been assigned as a technology showcase partner for the equipment, with a number of tours planned for later in the year.

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