he British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) calls the Brooklyn Bridge one of the seven wonders of the industrial age. Construction began on the world’s first steel-wire suspension/cable-stay bridge in 1869 and was completed in 1883. The structure boasts more than 14,000 miles of steel cable. Each cable has 19 separate strands each comprising 278 wires. Its granite towers weigh 90,000 tons each.

Because of the amount of steel used in the bridge, it can rise as much as 3 in. during cold weather because metal expands and contracts in response to temperature changes. The longevity of the 5,989 ft.-long span (slightly over 1.1 miles) is credited to redundancies in its support system. Designer and civil engineer Augustus Roebling calculated the structural strength needed to support daily traffic and then designed the bridge to be six times stronger.

hree macro forces drive significant change in the world of forming. They don’t necessarily paint a rosy picture, but there is good news to come.

The introduction of fiber lasers about a decade ago injected excitement and optimism into the profiling sector of fabrication, but faster speeds and higher throughput has created new issues downstream. The long-held standard for CO₂ lasers was two press brakes for every laser. With fiber, that number can double depending on the part makeup.

OEM and job shops alike are being challenged to find profitability in low-volume/high-mix manufacturing environments. An easy task for a laser but, without the right technology in place, this type of manufacturing environment can significantly reduce the efficiency of the bending process due to increased setups per day on the press brake.

esistance welding, long viewed as a stepchild in the family of welding, is finally gaining the attention and respect it deserves by manufacturers of metal parts, says Tom Snow, chairman of T. J. Snow Co. Inc.

This is especially true in applications such as resistance projection welding of nuts and studs to the high-strength steel alloys now being used in the automotive industry to reduce weight.

Founded in 1905, The Ohio Nut & Bolt Co., Berea, Ohio, advises customers on resistance welded fasteners and produces a wide selection of styles, which include parts designed to be either spot welded or projection welded. Spot welding can be done successfully with a rocker arm-type resistance welder, whereas projection-welded nuts and studs are best attached with a vertical action press-type machine.

ver the years, a wide range of portable equipment has been developed to perform metal cutting in-place, where it was not feasible to take the workpiece to a floor-mounted machine. For example, magnetic-based drills can accomplish drill-press accurate holes anywhere they can be attached. Similarly, portable powered threading machines quickly and easily generate excellent pipe threaded ends in the field without the need for a machine shop.

For work on tube and pipe, portable machine tools that were primarily designed for simple end preparation for welders, are being custom repurposed as dynamic and practical fabrication solutions that offer many significant advantages over conventional machine shop equipment.

n auto manufacturer needed better performing ceramic quick-change discs. Previously, the ceramic disc’s material would fail to withstand the extreme grinding temperatures. The disc’s material also would become too hot and glaze over, causing the disc to shell and deteriorate. This meant frequent disc changeovers and poor efficiency.

The automaker turned to ARC Abrasives in Troy, Ohio, to conduct a performance test using Predator Resin Fiber Quick-Loks and the manufacturer’s current ceramic quick-change discs. Both discs were tested in a typical workday scenario using a right-angle grinder to deburr aluminum automotive door trim frames. The long life and aggressive cut of Predator Quick-Loks resulted in saving an hour of labor a day.

atigue is a concern for heavy manufacturing companies, especially when running through processes that require workers to move hefty material to and from multiple stations manually.

At Production Fabricators Inc. (ProFab), each part took a total of two steps on two separate machines to complete. ProFab operators would bend large batches of steel blanks, first by pre-bending each blank on a press brake. The blanks were then formed again by inserting the pre-bent ends one at a time into a manual three-roll plate roll to complete the shaping process.

Using a SweBend QFV-1 vertical quick roll that was sourced through Trilogy Machinery (SweBend’s North American distributor), ProFab automated its bending process.