Steel Forming Systems Revived Salvaged Tooling

The Vice President of Steel Forming Systems, Inc. was visiting an automotive and truck parts manufacturer on a routine sales call. After a short conversation with the buyer, it was determined that the company was not in the market for our services. The buyer was kind enough, however, to give the VP a short tour of their facilities.

While walking through the assembly plant, our VP happened upon a set of tarnished and dusty roll form tooling.  He asked the buyer which part it formed, and the buyer was stumped. More investigation led them to discover that it formed a cargo door track for a delivery van, a common part that was made in-house on a brake press. According to the production manager, the roll form tooling had been purchased about seven years prior in order to reduce cost in production and to keep up with increased demand. Never getting it to work properly, the program was suspended. Their costly investment was just sitting on the shelves for years while the parts were produced inefficiently.

Our VP then asked to borrow the tooling for a short period to investigate the problem at our own expense. The highly skilled tool room staff at Steel Forming Systems took the tooling through several part layouts and made a few minor alterations. We even purchased a coil of tryout steel to test it out. A week after accepting the tooling on loan, our production manager brought back samples of the part. The customer was surprised and thrilled to learn that we were able to salvage his investment and improve production efficiency at the same time. Several years later, we still produce this part to a high degree of quality using the same tooling.

At Steel Forming Systems we take great pride in doing things the right way.  We enjoy solving problems for our customers and making better components and tooling than our competitors.  If your company has a problem with an existing part or set of tooling, let us develop a solution for you.