Shane Dittrich
Manufacturing Manager
T&D Metal Products Watseka, IL

T&D Metal Products is a large custom manufacturer of metal parts and assemblies for OEM manufacturers. In addition T&D produces and markets four product lines themselves. The company spans three generations, having been founded in 1951 by Howard Dittrich, and now being lead by Roger Dittrich. Third generation, Shane Dittrich, now serves as T&D’s Manufacturing Manager.

“C-Frame Tooling fits into the manufacturing process between hard tooling and the turret.”

“ Mitsubishi® is one of our big customers. They only carry a 3-hour inventory of parts. They send semi trucks over to our plant every day to pick up parts. We use UniPunch C-Frame Tooling to make two different steering columns for them."

“ C-Frame tooling is easy to work on...it’s fast. When we are doing one or two jobs, making two different parts in one day, we set the UniPunches up on one template and then move the stops around to make both parts on the same setup. We like C-Frame because it’s handy and versatile. We have templates dedicated to specific customers for each job that we do for them, but sometimes there are 3 or 4 jobs on a single plate."

“ The things we make on the turret are one time products, or once a month type products, whereas we use the UniPunch C-units on jobs that we run every day, instead of making a die. Many times it is more cost effective to use C-Frame Tooling rather than building a die, even though we have our own die makers in house. "

“Once the UniPunch C-Frame units are set...they’re just as good as hard tooling.”

“ If we have a dedicated setup of C-Frame tooling already set up, and we needed 25 parts, we could put that setup in the brake and run the job faster using C-Frame than we could set up the turret. We just take the dedicated C-Frame setup out of storage, put it in the press and we’re done in 10 minutes."

“ C-Frame tooling fits into the manufacturing process between hard tooling and the turret. The turret, for as good a machine as it is...is slow. "

“ If the operator is good enough and there is a lot of tooling, you can just about make anything on a turret. Once you have a turret, some people get it in their mind that that is the only thing they need, no matter how slow it is. "

“ If a part is a hit or miss type product, we will never build a die set. The only way we will build a die is if we are sure that the run will last a good period of time and that the volume is going to be such that we can get our money back out of the die, otherwise we won’t do it. We used to make die sets all the time. But now, it’s more cost effective to run parts on the turret or with UniPunch.”

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