Staffordshire-based Alpha Manufacturing has invested in a new TruBend 7000 bending cell as part of a £1 million expansion plan.

The automated robotic cell will significantly increase the precision sheet metal fabricator’s folding capacity and give the company more flexibility, particularly in small batch work (www.alphamanufacturing.co.uk).

This is a key step in a strategic development plan that was set out in 2015 to fully automate the manufacturing facility by 2020.

The first part of the plan was the purchase last year of a STOPA automated storage system and a Trumpf TruLaser 3030 Fibre machine at a combined cost of £1 million. Raw material that has been loaded into the STOPA storage system is picked by a crane and delivered to processing machines as required.

The TruBend 7000 cell has been strategically positioned so that it can easily be integrated with the STOPA, when the time comes for that system to be extended to run the entire length of the factory.

The entire folding process will then be fully automated.