BITO Lagertechnik Bittmann GmbH is happy to continue the partnership. The company has grown constantly since its first ARKU feeding line went online in 1986. Today, BITO places great va-lue in automated processes and maxi-mum flexibility. That is why the project partners also have to be flexible and reliable; characteristics which ARKU recently proved with a turnkey system.

Meisenheim, Germany – Impressive is the best word to describe BITO‘s pro-duction facility in Meisenheim. The middlesized company has more than 890 employees and manufactures a diverse spectrum of shelving systems. These range from simple archive shelves to heavy pallet shelves and automated shelving systems. BITO also produces a broad range of plastic boxes and containers at its second plant, lo-cated nearby in Lauterecken. The com-pany now receives orders from all over the world. BITO maintains 14 subsidi-aries in Europe and a branch in Dubai. Working together with sales partners

distributed around the globe, they crea-te a comprehensive sales network.

Quickly available at the press of a button

The BITO production facility in Meisen-heim manufactures everything which customers from a vast range of diffe-rent branches need for their storage lo-

gistics. Whether small or large, light or heavy, bulky or long – BITO‘s business is as varied as the parts stored. ”We often have to deal with drastically fluc-tuating order quantities. This demands the utmost flexibility from both the employees and the machines“, explains Günter Knecht, the Head of Industrial Engineering at BITO. ”Reliability and maximum availability are essential for

us and our customers. That is why we rely on highly automated processes.“ State-of-the-art systems make this possible: Robots move heavy stacks of panels from A to B at the press of a button. The entire facility can be con-trolled intuitively with just one user interface. This includes twelve systems from ARKU. Günter Knecht values one of these above all: the feeding line

with an integrated punching machine and robots, which was commissioned in 2012.

Turnkey solution from a long-standing partner

Coils provide the material for up to one million panels for trays, supports and shelves. In addition to the sheer

In October and November this year you can encounter our levelers in Hanover (Germany), Atlanta (USA) und Shanghai (China), when you vi-sit the ”sheet metal expos“ current-ly taking place in diverse locations around the world.

This is a fantastic opportunity for our company to present itself worldwide. The EuroBLECH 2014 in Hanover has traditionally been a key focus. This world exhibition for sheet metal processing is a major role model for all of the other trade fairs in our industry. At FabTech, we will present once again new leveling and feeding line technology. Our ARKU employees are looking forward to meeting you and ex-changing ideas.

Albert Reiss, ARKU CEO

”Sheet metal expos“

Continuing partnershipFor almost 30 years BITO has relied on ARKU‘s technology and know-how

No. 44 / 2014

InfoMAXExperts in leveling of sheet metal parts and coils

ARKU Coil Systems Inc. · 11405 Grooms Road · Cincinnati, OH 45242 · USA · Phone: +1 (513) 985-0500 · Fax: +1 (513) 985-0580 · E-Mail: leveling@arku.com · www.arku.com

Continued on page 2

Processing panels from start to finish: Using ARKU‘s turnkey system, BITO can process, level and punch coil widths of up to 1,500 millimeters.

Franck Hirschmann (VP Sales Coil Lines at ARKU), Günter Knecht (Head of Engi-neering BITO), Alexander Owtscharenko and Sascha Jung (Installation technicians BITO).

ARKU gewinnt Außenwirtschaftspreis

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim.

volume, BITO has to process very broad coils for special orders. Where it was once limited to 500 mm, the compa-ny can now work with coil widths up to 1,500 mm. The decoiler is desig-ned for coils weighing up to 20 tons. ARKU´s CoilMaster® 50150 leveler forms the heart of the system. This is followed by edge trimming shears, a punching machine and a cut-to-length shear. At the end, a robot stacks the panels before they are passed on to the bending machine. ”We felt it was very important to carry out the enti-re project with one reliable partner. Because of our long-standing coope-ration, we knew that ARKU was the right choice“, explains Mr. Knecht. ARKU´s first feeding line, which was commissioned in 1986, continues to run just as reliably today.

BITO was already able to process the first series of a customer order du-ring the pre-commissioning phase in Baden-Baden. The close proximi-ty to the project partner proved to be a major advantage. This allowed a number of BITO employees to travel to Baden-Baden for extensive training. Since the rapid commissioning in Meisenheim, numerous projects at BITO have already run through the sys-tem, including a number of large-scale orders for trays. Accordingly, Günter Knecht is full of praise for the results: ”The project competence and reliabi-lity of ARKU‘s team were deciding fac-tors for us. Paired with the outstanding quality of the systems, of course. When it comes to leveling panels, ARKU re-mains our first choice.“ www.bito.com

Birmingham, Ala., – Specifications for flatness on steel plate parts are beco-ming tighter and more common with the heavy equipment OEM‘s in the U.S., and O‘Neal Manufacturing Services is a leader in meeting those require-ments. The company is one of the lar-gest manufacturers of complex metal fabrications for the heavy equipment industry. Its ten plants offer 1.5 million square feet of outsourcing support for

OEM‘s in the agriculture, construction, railroad and power generation indus-tries.

O‘Neal recently received its second ARKU FlatMaster®, a model 120-200 for its headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama. The machine is the lar-gest FlatMaster® in North America, allowing O‘Neal to level parts up to 1.675“ thick and 78“ wide.

”Our Alabama facility was quoting some business with a tight flatness tolerance on parts larger and thicker than our smaller FlatMaster® could handle,“ said Gene Gadient, an appli-cation engineer at O‘Neal. ”We have a gantry flattening press, but it is a trial-and-error method that may take several hits from both sides of a part. You can chase a high spot for quite a while. With our FlatMaster®, we set the control and the part typically co-mes out flat on the first pass, very flat.“ More than just leveling the part, the FlatMaster® also stress relieves it, making it much easier to weld or bend.

The contract for the Alabama plant largely involves mild steel nearly 1“ thick, with a minimum yield of 36 to 50

ksi. The parts are cut from sheet and vary widely in size and shape, some with openings, cut by laser or plasma machines. A typical flatness require-ment is 0.07“ across a 60“ diameter.

OMS installed its first FlatMaster®, a model 88, in Greensboro, NC, in May 2013 for a large OEM construction con-tract. „We found in Greensboro there‘s a definite advantage to using flat parts in our downstream operations,“ said Gadient. ”It is a unique manufacturing asset.“

FlatMaster® machines are available for part thicknesses up to 2.25“.

www.onealsteel.com

Chase for flatness ends at O‘Neal Manufacturing ServicesCompany‘s second FlatMaster® will be the largest ARKU leveler in North America

InfoMAX

ARKU-Ticker

Brian Fella, O`Neal Production Manager (on left) and Randy Duckworth, O´Neal machine ope-rator in front of the new FlatMaster® 120.

The company manufactures stable shelving for large warehouses. BITO manufactures more than 5,000 warehousing equipment products.

Continued from page 1

The video featuring satisfied customers in Germany has now been followed by another version with customers in the USA and China. See for yourself how satisfied international customers are with ARKU precision levelers: Simply scan the QR code.

International satisfaction

InfoMAX

It was a boring day on August 6th, 2014 for the ISO auditors who did a follow-up visit in Cincinnati and found no non-conformities. ”It looks like we‘re a model for the industry,“ joked Operation Manager Patric Jobst. ISO certification is no joke, though. ”Increasingly, this is a requirement for doing business in the U.S., and we take it very seriously.“

ARKU Cincinnati exhibited for the first time at the AMTS show, October 22-23, 2014, in Dayton, Ohio. ”We know some leveling center customers attend this show and we always make an effort to be where our customers are, so we gave it a try,“ said Nicholas Miller, technical director. ”Smaller shows like this one allow more time with visitors and it was really a great opportunity.“

New trade show ISO audit aced

Convincing quality wins the day: After two years of contract leveling at ARKU, ”Michelfelder Metall- und Lasertechnik“ has now purchased its own EcoMaster® 30. The precisi-on parts leveler is absolutely reliable and is utilized to manufacture medical baskets.

Spaichingen, Germany - Medical equip-ment also requires flat, perforated panels, as demonstrated by a current

project at ”Michelfelder Metall- und Lasertechnik“. The company supplies medical equipment and devices throughout Germany. Founded in 1970, the company restructured in 2012 as part of its ongoing expansion. This gave rise to Michelfelder Metall- und Lasertechnik and in the same year the company decided to commence coope-ration with ARKU. In the spring of 2014 it then purchased the EcoMaster® 30 parts leveler. Up until then, Michelfelder

had to contract out its parts leveling to ARKU. ”The quality delivered by ARKU in the last two years convinced us and we have now brought this re-liable technology on board“, explains Michelfelder‘s Managing Director, Dietmar Ilg.

Leveling medical baskets with consistently exceptio-nal quality

The perforated panels leveled with the EcoMaster® are required to manufac-ture medical baskets. These baskets are an essential part of the medical care at hospitals and elsewhere. The medical baskets are utilized in ope-rating rooms, for example, to hold the surgical equipment. It is very im-portant that the baskets are perfectly dimensioned in order to ensure rapid access to the medical equipment.This has proven to be a challenging task in the past: After punching, the perfo-

rated panels are subject to so much internal stress that they are often heavily deformed. The EcoMaster® 30 precision parts leveler provides re-liable assistance and is designed for panel thicknesses from 0.3 to 5 mil-limeters. Michelfelder now easily and consistently achieves flatness within tenths of a millimeter. Nevertheless, the leveling process only takes a few seconds.

”Thanks to the EcoMaster® 30, our production is now significantly faster and more efficient, which is a major advantage both for us and also for our customers“, emphasizes Dietmar Ilg. ”At the same time, we also offer neigh-boring companies from a variety of different industries the opportunity to level their materials.“ In the process, ARKU‘s leveling technology is finding new friends in the Spaichingen region.

www.michelfelder.de

Reliable technology brought on boardMichelfelder: From contract leveling at ARKU to the purchase of its EcoMaster® 30

Perforated panels before and after leveling with the EcoMaster® 30.

Cincinnati leveling center a magnet for distant customersTough steels and appearance parts leveled easily in Cincinnati

Customers in Canada and Mexico are being drawn to Cincinnati for flat metal parts. This is especially true for those working with impact- and abrasion-re-sistant steels, such as AR500 and 400, or surface critical parts. Customers are now sending these parts to Cincinnati from Mexico and Canada, not to men-tion Seattle.

The same heat treatment and tem-pering that give AR steel its unique properties also cause the material to warp and distort. Processors may try to re-quench and temper the material or flatten it in-house, but it seems to

have a long memory – until it meets the FlatMaster® in Cincinnati.

”We have seen AR-grade parts that have been seriously out of flat,“ said Chad Ellis, Leveling Center Supervi-sor. ”Residual stress in the material is released by cutting or punching, even if there was no distortion originally. At this point, the parts may be impossible to fixture for welding.“

Ellis says metal producers are also sending entire sheets to Cincinnati. ”We sometimes process material they might otherwise scrap,“ he adds. ”We

can easily get it within spec for sale. We have leveled AR steel parts up to 1“ (25.4 mm) thick.“

When appearances count

At the other end of the spectrum from abrasion-resistant steel are the sur-face-critical parts seen frequently at the leveling center. ”Scratches and dings on stainless steel are out of the ques-tion for food processing machinery and medical equipment,“ Ellis said. ”The same holds true for decorative me-tals, such as brass, bronze and copper. The FlatMaster® excels with appea-rance parts because the leveling rollers

are easy to clean. The quick change fea-ture makes it easy to clean every day if desired. We recently processed some mirror-polished, half-inch stainless that left here in pristine condition.“

This material comes from all over North America, and can even be pro-cessed with the protective PVC wrap still in place. ”We‘ve processed stain-less steel sheets 72“ wide by 144“ long for railcars, and smaller parts for ae-rospace,“ Ellis added. ”We can see mill spec for flatness up to12 mm for sheets of stainless steel. We can easily get this below three millimeters depending on the initial state.“

ARKU leveling center : Efficient, quick and flexible response to customer requests out of the US, Canada and Mexico.

Patric Jobst (second from left), ARKU Operations and Sales Manager with two of our leveling center customers.

Brooklyn, NY – All levelers are not alike, and Architectural Grille is among our customers who have gained an appre-ciation for the automatic leveling gap control and easy-cleaning features unique to the FlatMaster®, after using another hydraulic leveler for a number of years.

Architectural Grille specializes in cus-

tom grille manufacturing for residen-tial, commercial, hospitality, medical, architectural/decorative and education markets. The 40-person shop uses ad-vanced technology to produce custom designs in high volume, or quantities as small one. Materials include various metals in thicknesses from 0.062“ to 0.375“, as well as non-metallics.

After using another hydraulic leve-ler for a number years, the company purchased a FlatMaster® 55-165 in ear-ly 2014 and found it in a class by itself, says company Vice President and En-gineering Manager Stephen Giumen-ta. ”We throw everything at the machi-ne, and it usually takes just one pass to get the parts flat,“ he says. ”Parts may be aluminum, stainless steel, mild steel, brass, bronze or copper. Different

shapes, sizes, thickness, often heavily perforated with openings cut by laser, waterjet and punch.“

”The machine is a no-brainer to run,“ says Giumenta. ”You set the material thickness, put in a distorted part, and it comes out flat. We had it installed and began training on it in one day. We were running parts the next day.“

Blemishes caused by dirty leveling rol-lers were another issue with Architectu-ral Grille‘s earlier machine. ”We had to bring in a rigger to tear down the machi-ne so we could clean the roller section,“ Giumenta says. ”Blemishes on our parts require additional processing, so we clean the leveling rollers regularly. With the FlatMaster, one person can remove and clean the rollers in a few minutes.“

Architectural Grille‘s part volume keeps the leveler busy about five hours a day. The excess capacity allows the company to solicit contract leveling from fabrica-tors in the region. ”A leveler of this cali-ber is an unusual manufacturing asset, so companies in our area are starting to take advantage.“

www.archgrille.com

FlatMaster® proves it IS Master of flatnessArchitectural Grille tests the Master‘s versatility with short runs of appearance-critical parts in vari-ous materials, part sizes, thicknesses, and shapes.

Playing at work can be a good thing, especially if you‘re playing golf with customers or potential customers. Two of ARKU Cincinnati‘s better golfers put that idea to the test last May at the Precision Metalforming Association‘s Ohio District annual golf outing. Operations and Sales Manager Patric Jobst and Leveling Center Supervisor Chad Ellis were among nearly 100 who competed.

”We may meet some of our own

customers face-to-face for the first time in a setting like this because so much is done in e-mail today,“ said Jobst. ”It‘s a great opportunity to es-tablish the personal relationship.“

”There‘s a lot of time to get to know new people on a golf course – bet-ween the teasing about someone‘s last shot,“ added Ellis. ”I got a call from our playing partner recently about a contract leveling job. It‘s new business.“

Future ARKU experts trai-ned in Cincinnati

Matthew Hubbell had not even gra-duated from college last August, but had already assisted ARKU technici-ans with a machinery installation in Cincinnati. Today, he has his Asso-ciates degree in Electro-Mechanical Engineering Technology from Cincin-nati State Technical and Community College, and is the newest full-time employee in Cincinnati.

We hope Matthew will be part of a new generation of leveling and coil hand-ling experts to be trained in the U.S. As a co-op student, part of his educa-tion was devoted to working full-time in jobs related to his career interests, which helped cover the cost of tuition.

A Southern Ohio native, Matthew has acclimated well with ARKU‘s culture and enjoys the busy workplace. Du-ring his co-op period, he worked in a

lot of different areas as a way to get to know our business and technology.

At 23, Matthew is recently married and has had his hands full with school and work, but he still tries to reserve time for his outside in-terests. ”I enjoy sport shooting and have played paintball and Airsoft in the past,“ he said. ”My ‚target‘ right now is a good career path at ARKU.“ Send your tips and greeting to him at matthew.hubbell@arku.com.

Playing at work pays off

Personality Matthew Hubbell

Imprint Masthead / Publisher: ARKU experts in leveling Masthead: Albert Reiss, CEO Coordination: Alexandra SchuldtDesign: Marschner+Kühn GmbH & Co. KG Composition: Rommel & Company Print: Kwik Kopy Printing

InfoMAX

Team ARKU: Chad Ellis (left) and Patric Jobst (right) represented the company at the PMA‘s annual Ohio District golf outing.

Stephen Giumenta, VP & Design Engineer and Michael Faria, machine operator of Architectural Grille checking the flatness.

Stephen Giumenta, VP & Design Engineer of Architectural Grille in front of a variety of grilles.