Tim Beauman
Tooling Designer Cooper B-Line Highland, IL

Cooper B-Line, formed in 1970, is a industry leading manufacturer of aluminum, steel and stainless steel cable tray systems for electrical and communications wiring systems. B-Line is also a major manufacturer of cable runways, wireways, electrical cabinets, fittings and accessories. Well known around the world for high quality products, B-Line can ship complex systems knocked down to save freight. The company has more than 1,000 employees and seven plants around the US.

“Using unitized tooling is really the only economical way to produce these parts”

“ We punch a lot of aluminum and steel extrusions here in the Troy, IL plant. We’re using UniPunch tooling in dedicated setups to fabricate a number of different hole intensive parts for our cable tray product line. "

“ We gave UniPunch the profile of the part and told them what we wanted to do. They came up with the design of the holder and the setup. We also punch L-channels with this same dedicated setup, with the same hole configuration, same units. We make multiple depth cable trays so we’re spreading the cost over multiple parts.”

What other option is there to produce these parts?
“ Without costing an arm and a leg...there is no other way. There just is no other way to do it. You would have to punch each one of those holes individually or come up with some other unit to punch multiple holes, but you would have to set the fixture up to have multiple stops, and the cost would be tremendous...labor would be outrageous. Our turret press could not produce this part. Using unitized tooling is really the only economical way to produce these parts.”

How many of these parts a do you run each year?
“ One hundred thousand parts a year on this one setup, but we’re making many other different parts using UniPunch tooling.”

What are the economics of using dedicated setups at B-Line, considering the wide and varied product line you have?
“ Now, using dedicated setups, you just find the fixture with the units already set up, put it in the press, use it and when you’re done, take it out. These are high use parts, several thousand parts a month and we can’t afford the time that it would take to knock these setups down and set them back up each time we run a part. Dedicated setups are the way to go."

“UniPunch has been very good about modifying pedestal dies. All of our pedestal dies are specially made to fit our profiles. We rely on UniPunch engineering to assist us when we are not sure how we can punch a certain part. We just call UniPunch, and they give us an idea or a preliminary sketch or drawing showing what we need to do.”

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