It's the size of a tall, narrow car. It can spit out a simple wire spring at a rate of upwards of 4,000 per hour.
Todd Miller calls it a boon to his business.
Miller, president of Myers Spring, on Friday watched as a technician from Wafios Machinery Corp. continued instructing Myers Spring wireformers on using the new Wafios 25 wire-bending machine.
It's the first of its kind to be installed on U.S. soil, according to Wafios service engineer Robert Smith. It's the eighth in the world the German company has made, he said.
It's also the first of seven new pieces of equipment being installed at Myers Spring over the next month or so. All told, the equipment will represent about $1.5 million the company is investing this year to become more productive. Miller intends to invest another $1 million or so next year, too.
"When you're dealing with wire, you want to get all the barriers to creativity out of the way," Miller said. Though not a wireformer himself — he leaves that up to the experts, he said — he believes he's doing wireformers a favor by bringing in equipment that does the grunt work by itself, "allowing our operators to focus on quality and quick output."
The $370,000 Wafios machine is named for the number of "axes of control" it has — each axis representing one movement one arm of the machine can make. The machine has several arms surrounding the area in which a spring is made.
It does the work of four older wire-bending machines, Miller said. Its output varies depending on the type of spring being formed, but a spring with straight torsion and one or two forms — in other words, a fairly simple spring similar to the kind that snaps a mousetrap shut — can be manufactured at a rate of more than 2,000 or 2,500 per hour at the machine's optimum settings.
An older machine sitting right next to the new one can put out a similar spring at a rate of around 1,000 per hour, a Myers Spring technician said.
Although the company has hired four people this year, Miller said Myers Spring's new acquisitions aren't necessarily about adding jobs. They're about making more springs with the existing workforce.
Despite perceptions of manufacturing being shipped overseas, "the fact is there's more manufacturing in North America than ever," Miller said.
Data from the U.S. Federal Reserve's economic research arm indicates that manufacturing as a whole is currently slightly above 2007 output. Its Sept. 15 report on industrial production and capacity utilization shows auto-related manufacturing, in particular, is up significantly — more than 14 percent this year over 2007 output. That's good news for Myers Spring, which counts major car manufacturers among its clients.
The new Wafios machine arrived Monday, Sept. 22, and technicians have been undergoing training on its use since. Smith said an experienced wireformer could learn the machine's user interface in two or three days, even after having used older machines for similar purposes.
"It's like going from Windows 7 to Windows 8," Smith explained. "Everything's in a different spot and you need to find it."
On a computer screen attached to the machine, wireformers specify a spring's configurations — modifying one of a couple dozen dimensions, and watching a 3-D image of the resulting spring morph on screen as dimensions are altered.
Once a program's in place, technicians also have to make sure several physical attachments are installed on the machine, too. In a change from older machines, changing attachments can be done in about two hours and may be started while other portions of the machine are still producing another type of spring.
The machine may also form two or three portions of a spring simultaneously, depending how it's set up.
Lasers allow a technician to monitor and adjust the angle, or twist, of a spring, and a built-in camera measures springs to check their quality.
"We work all the time with our suppliers to make sure we're on the cutting edge of technology, management practices and product development," Miller said. It's all part of what he says is the company's main goal: to serve its customers.
"It's a little bit like loving your neighbor like you want to love yourself," Miller said. "It's easy to say, but it's difficult to implement."