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Charles Day Steels - Industrial 1 Charles Day Steels – Industrial

Charles Day Steels

Location

UK – Sheffield

Problem

Identification and labelling of components meaning machine downtime and bottleneck of company workflow

Result

Significant time and cost savings. Minimal alterations to procedures, significant reduction in production bottleneck.

Background

As a leading UK-based outsourced profiling supplier, Charles Day Steels has an extensive range of advanced profiling equipment, including the latest in fibre and CO2 laser technology. The company supplies accurate, detailed and reliable profiled products and components to over 5000 customers and has established a reputation for innovation and dependability.

In order to maximise the capacity of their machines to meet demand, Charles Day Steels use a suite of advanced CNC laser cutters which, through a process known as nesting, will profile as many different components from each metal sheet as possible. As a result, multiple pieces for multiple customers will be cut from the same sheet, at the same time.

Upon completion of the profiling process, each component, for each customer must be identified and labelled for dispatch which presently requires extensive time and labour, creates downtime for the machines and a bottleneck for the company’s workflow as well as risking miscommunication and dispatch errors if allowed to go unchecked.

Why choose Addition?

End-to-end design and additive manufacturing means we understand your problem and deliver the solution. Before committing to design work, we will create a bespoke design brief so that you can be sure of what we will deliver before committing. We seek to ensure that every solution strikes a balance between pragmatism and innovation – our designs create a competitive advantage for our customers.

What was the problem?

Addition were asked to develop a solution which would allow Charles Day Steels to standardise their profile labelling process and scale the solution to their range of machines.

What did we do?

To achieve this, Addition drafted and delivered a bespoke design and development project working from concept to prototype before setting up the final design for on-demand production using Addition’s in-house industrial 3D printing facilities.

Addition’s work included reverse engineering, 3D CAD, concept design and prototyping, delivering the final prototypes on time and on budget to complement the other project partners. The same materials and production process which were to be used for prototyping are also used for production units, ensuring the continuity and quality of supply that Addition’s customers demand.

The resulting device can be integrated across Charles Day Steels’ facility to offer significant time and cost savings with minimal alterations to existing procedures and none to the company’s equipment to significantly reduce the production bottleneck.

In such a harsh manufacturing environment, components can wear fast or be damaged with relative ease so not only does the final design and material choice consider these factors, the very nature of on-demand manufacture afforded to the Charles Day Steels by industrial 3D printing means they benefit from an endless stock of these critical devices through virtual stockholding.

Endless stock of critical device through virtual stockholding

Gallery

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Addition are masters in applying the benefits of industrial 3D printing and, together with their expertise in design, they were quick to develop a solution to our production problem. They developed and supplied a bespoke device which supports our business and will give us a competitive advantage through a professionally delivered design and development project.
James Day, Business Operations Director, Charles Day Steels
This is just one example of how additive technology can be utilised to benefit your workflow and reduce downtime. If this something that you can see benefitting your production line, please get in touch!