Manufacturing is changing dramatically and technology will continue to rapidly advance the industry for years to come. Advances in laser technology and robotics have made major strides in recent years, changing the nature of steel production.
At DeGeest Steel Works Co. (DSW), located in Tea, South Dakota (USA), the commitment to innovation and automation has led to its position as an industry leader in technology and robotics in all phases of manufacturing. In the last 5 years, DSW has woven technology and software into the entire manufacturing process to complete the fabrication job.
DeGeest Steel Works, Co. is a 3rd generation family business established in 1976. It is a steel fabricator for large OEMs providing 100,000’s of different large and complex parts and subparts to OEMs in the fields of agriculture, forestry, mining, earth-moving machines and utilities. DeGeest Steel Works laser cuts, saws, punches, drills, taps, bends, welds, paints and assembles various parts that end up in machines used all over the world.
The DeGeest Steel Works, Co. original facility in Harrisburg, SD, was 43,000 sq. ft (around 4,000 m2 ). In 2014, DSW built the current facility in Tea, measuring 78,000 sq. ft (over 7,200 m2 ). With the building expansion completed in February 2019, the facility is now 133,000 sq. ft (12,500 m2 ).
Derek DeGeest, third-generation President of the company, highlighted to ipcm® the new features of the DSW Tea facility, including the automated technology for its custom steel manufacturing. “DSW is able to accommodate larger OEMs with expanded capabilities and extensive automation. This alleviates one of the biggest problems faced by large OEMs – finding labour to meet demands. With DSW, they are able to outsource projects requiring a great deal of shop time. We are always striving to push the boundaries on what is possible in manufacturing. We are adding more robotics and automation in storage, software, blasting, washing, drying, painting and packaging to enhance our talented work force accomplish more. DeGeest Steel Works has the ability to quickly adapt to our customers changing needs”.
“Our use of automation and robotics has not taken jobs from anyone, instead it has reduced overuse injuries from repetitive tasks, created more jobs to add to our team and given us access to work that wasn’t available or sustainable before”, Derek DeGeest added. In fact, we are adding more jobs than we had in the past 2 decades and plan to increase our workforce of another 40% over the next 2-5 years to help meet the demand in our growing business.”
DSW opened a robotic liquid paint system in North America to offer customers high quality painted products that can go straight to their assembly lines.
“In the past 5 years, we have automated all areas of our business, whereas with the DSW software division we have created most of the software programs that we use to track our workpieces,” says Derek DeGeest. “However, this investment in production automation had made the company extremely more efficient and responsive, but it had also created a bottleneck that did not exist before: coating, that is, the only production phase that had remained manual, exclusively performed by our operators.
The slowness of the coating phase jeopardized the balance achieved with the automation of all other areas. Finding an automation solution also for our liquid painting department had therefore become vital for DSW’s growth.”
“In order to robotize a new paint system, we began a search across North America for a suitable partner, but we were unsuccessful: nobody could help us make our coating department more efficient through robots without the need for long and complicated robot programming operations. We therefore extended the search outside North America and we came across Lesta, an Italian company that produced self-learning coating robots that appeared very simple to use. So we took advantage of an already planned trip to Germany for the purchase of a welding robot to also go to Italy to check out Lesta’s robotic technology,” explains Derek DeGeest.
“The most interesting aspect of Lesta’s self-learning robots is their ease of programming. DSW coats complex components: creating a painting program off-line means investing a lot of time and resources. However, the use of these robots does not require any advanced programming skills.
Upon completion of the installation, a manufacturer of any size can literally be making their own programs and finishing robotically on Day One. A finishing specialist initiates a programming sequence while the robot’s motors are disengaged which creates a free-floating learning mode. The software generates its own robotic code of every movement and spray output parameters. The finisher’s exact technique is saved and then mirrored by the robot on future jobs”.
DSW built the new automated wet-coat paint line around Lesta’s robotic solution. It is composed of a 5-stages pre-treatment tunnel, 2 Lesta suction and blow-off robot stations, a dry-off oven followed by a cool down tunnel, 2 primer booths with a flash-off area in between 2 top coat booths, a curing oven and a cool down tunnel. Handling of the pieces is done with a power&free conveyor with 9’ long load bars and the painting booth are integrated in a clean room. The painting system is solvent-based and comprises an epoxy primer in 2 colours and an urethane topcoat in 8 colours. Colours to be applied are specified by the end customer.
“We installed 6 Lesta robots in our paint system” DeGeest added. “2 robots for the application of the epoxy primer, 2 for the application of the urethane topcoat and 2 suction and blow-off robots to eliminate water pockets from the parts after the multistage pre-treatment and prior to entering the dry-off oven. This is a new application of robots to the finishing industry. It came from a problem we saw in our line, that is water getting trapped inside the parts during the pre-treatment. Due to these water residues, we would have had to raise the temperature of the drying oven or lengthen the drying process time. Both options were unsustainable. Reengineering the parts to include drainage holes was not an option either, because the components are not owned by us and cannot be modified.
Given the Lesta robots’ ease of programming, we therefore designed our own water sucking and blow-off section. In this way, we were able to immediately reduce the drying oven temperature by 20% while speeding up the process and significantly saving on utility costs. Today the takt-time of our line is around 4 to 6 min per load bar and our operators are really happy with the introduction of the robots on the paint line. They were really surprised and excited for the robot’s potential” DeGeest commented. “We have no need for manual touch ups: the robot is very flexible and can easily reach the hidden parts of the components. This is efficiency at its best!”.
With an eye on the future, DSW has added several new products and services related to automation and programming:
“With a portfolio of 100,000+ customer parts, DSW has to ensure the correct information is always at the fingertips of its team members so everything moves smoothly from order entry through shipment. One example of a recent development is a proprietary system that digitally connects every aspect of our operation to guide parts through our shop”, Derek DeGeest ended. “This development saves time, increases quality, and empowers our team to save our customers money and logistical pain. The system programs, documents and uploads every unique process of a customer’s specific part into our comprehensive digital system. It automatically controls revision levels and saves detailed process documentation at each phase of production to ensure repeatability and efficiency. It is like a Supervisor with the task to maximize the line density and jobs and control the production”.
“We have leveraged our robotic and software experience to help bring Lesta’s new robotic technology to North America. Through this process both Lesta and DSW have developed a friendship as well as a business relationship. Our companies strengths complement each other really well and we eventually formed an exclusive partnership leading to the launch of LestaUSA. LestaUSA’s exclusive manufacturing and distributorship of these self-learning robots expands DSW from a regional contract job shop to a supplier of robotic applications for all of North America”.