From a recent interview with Allen Anderson, Manufacturing Engineer at Stoughton Trailers. He shares some details on Stoughton’s use of the UniPunch unitized tooling system.

How does UniPunch tooling fit into your manufacturing model?

“We use it for many of our longer run parts. We have seven CNC Whitney machines, all with plasma cutting. These machines work great for a lot of our parts, but on many other parts, UniPunch is much more efficient. You can shear parts and punch 40 holes with one hit, rather than one single hole at a time. This is better time utilization.”

Do you use the units as dedicated set-ups, or do you set up and knock them down after each run?

“We do some of each. On many of our longer parts, we do holes on 2 inch centers. There are two different hole sizes, .204 diameter and .265, so we have setups dedicated to those diameters. But we have hundreds setups that are not dedicated and we tear them down after each run. We have program sheets, setup guides and template numbers for each part. We just grab the template and use the setup guide to gather all of the units, punches, dies & stops and whatever else may be needed for the part. Then drop each item into it’s alignment hole on the plate, bolt it down and we’re set to go.”

How has UniPunch been to work with?

“UniPunch has been very good to us. They also provide extremely fast turnaround on our orders.”