BVGlazing's clear views to efficiencies

BVGlazing designs, manufactures, and installs commercial and residential glazing, cladding, railing, skylight, and entry systems. Here we see an example of a curtain wall system installed in Toronto. Images: BVGlazing

Any fabricating facility doing large-volume jobs has to ensure that the tools at hand can process those jobs as efficiently as possible. For many shops, 2D fiber lasers have become the go-to tool for flat sheet cutting, but if a shop requires tapping and other specialized shapes, there’s really no replacement for an efficient turret punch press. BVGlazing Systems is a prime example of such a company. Combining its turret punch press investments with other shop floor efficiency efforts and machine investments has increased its productivity without unduly increasing head count in the fabricating department.

Construction Consistencies

BVGlazing was created in 2016 through the merger of Allan Windows Group and Global Architectural Metals Group, two dominant forces in the design, manufacture, and installation of commercial and residential glazing, cladding, railing, skylight, and entry systems in Canada and the U.S. for the past 60 years.

The company’s facilities in Niagara Falls and Concord, Ont., produce curtain wall, window wall, doors, and railing systems.

“Everything we do is related to windows and façades in one way or another,” said Jeremy Pasma, manufacturing engineering manager for BVGlazing. Pasma is based at the company’s Niagara Falls facility but travels between the two managing technical issues: process improvements and machine purchases and maintenance.

Like many companies, BVGlazing has gradually increased the level of sophistication on its production floor, finding new machines and establishing new processes to speed production in a high-demand industry.

“Unlike a lot of industries this past year, we haven’t really seen a slowdown because construction was deemed essential, and there are a lot of projects underway around Toronto and elsewhere that we are suppling materials to,” said Pasma.

Punch Press Perks

The company made a substantial leap in production efficiencies in 2013 when it purchased its first turret punch press, a Strippit M series machine with a load/unload system.

“At the time the company needed the machine for greater capacity and future development plans,” said Pasma. “Prior to that purchase, everything was done on a shear and a flywheel notching punch or tin snips.”

The company made a substantial leap in production efficiencies in 2013 when it purchased its first turret punch press, a Strippit M series machine with a load/unload system. Since then it has added a second.

The punch press is a 47-station thick-turret machine with three 3.5-in. autoindex stations. The autoindex feature allows a punch and die set to be rotated 360 degrees during punch press operation, enabling a large variety of complex-shaped products to be made with a minimum number of punches. Having three autoindex stations per turret increases the versatility of the turret punch press.

Both features were very important purchase considerations for Pasma.

“Leaving punches in the machine is key for productivity,” he said. “Tool changes are just downtime. And the autoindex capabilities just add to that productivity.”

The size of the machine was another important consideration.

“As a 5- by 10-ft. machine bed, the loader can handle a lot of the oversized sheet we use,” said Pasma.

The load/unload system includes a peeling process, double sheet detector, and fanning magnets to ensure only one sheet ends up on the machine at a time. According to LVD, the initial cycle time for load/unload is 63 seconds, although this can be cut down to around 43 seconds thereafter because a sheet can be preloaded while the machine is running.

The automation allows BVGlazing to run the turret punch press lights-out.

“We are trying to gain on unmanned hours,” said Pasma. “With parts going through the machine all night, those parts can be ready for further processing in the morning.”

Gaining Even More Efficiencies

The successful rollout of that first punch press led to the purchase of a second in 2017.

“The machine proved itself here in Niagara Falls,” said Pasma. “Downtime on it is less than around 20 hours for the year. And we push a lot of different material through it: stainless steel, aluminum up to almost a ¼ in. thick, and 3/16-in. steel. A lot of what we do is 22-ga. galvanized, but we’ll do a variety of painted and non-painted materials also.”

The second machine was installed at one of the company’s Concord facilities.

For nesting parts, the shop uses LVD’s CADMAN software.

“The program allows you to input all your values into a spreadsheet and it will create all the parts for you,” said Pasma. “You don’t have to import all the parts in CAD. Based on the parametric shape you’ve created in that spreadsheet, it will process the part. That helps on the higher-volume parts we run.”

An example of a high-volume part BVGlazing runs at both locations is a back pan, a substructure component used for thermal and moisture protection in buildings. It’s a four-sided bent part with a 7/16-in. return height that is screwed in place behind spandrel glass or a metal panel.

The BVGlazing team has created a number of process efficiencies with parts coming off the punch presses as well.

“We do what we can to keep people busy around the machines because they are so efficient,” said Pasma. “Labour is expensive, so the less we have to handle a part, the better. For instance, with some parts that don’t require post-processing, instead of transporting them from the punch press to our shipping department, we will arrange to crate parts right at the machine and have them leave that area boxed up to ship immediately.”

Folding Machine Fit

Reduced part handling was the inspiration for two other investments in the BV facilities in recent years: a RAS Multibend-Center and a RAS XLTbend. These are both folding machines that allow both up and down automated bending without any part handling.

“The Multibend is in one of our Concord facilities,” said Pasma. “The operator basically scans in a bar code, puts the sheet in, and [the folding machine] completely finishes the bend process. The XLTbend we installed in Niagara Falls allows us to bend almost 14 ft. both up and down. When you are running a lot of back pans and pro panels, which we do, a folding machine is an ideal tool. The bends are simple but there are a lot of them, and using a folding machine equipped with up and down bending, we don’t have to flip the part and we don’t require two people to handle it. As I mentioned before, the fewer people who touch a part, the better for our productivity.”

Pasma has no plans to add machines to the company’s shop floors, but as he says, incremental efficiency improvements will continue to sharpen the company’s production capabilities.

“Every day as we walk through the plant, we are monitoring our manufacturing processes, and if there are areas that can be improved, then we focus in on them,” he said. “Some of these changes are major and some are minor, but a lot of minor changes will make a major change at the end of the day.”

Editor Robert Colman can be reached at rcolman@canadianfabweld.com.

BVGlazing Systems, bvglazing.com