Penn Elcom, a world-leading manufacturer of hardware for ‘flight cases’, speaker cabinets and 19in racking solutions, is achieving ‘significantly shorter cycle times and vastly shorter lead times’ thanks to the phased replacement of press brakes with panel benders from Salvagnini, which has a UK subsidiary in Ross-on-Wye.

Penn Elcom is a global business with a $60 million turnover and a catalogue that contains more than 3,000 products in the field of ‘stage technology’. Roger Willems, the company’s founder and chairman, said: “We are the biggest manufacturer of flight case hardware in the world, and there can’t be many bands or orchestras that do not use our products; and while most people think we are American, I started the company in the UK.”

It was 1974 that Mr Willems founded the business in the village of Penn, Buckingham-shire. His first investment was a pre-owned power press costing £250, but the business grew steadily and in 2003 Penn merged with Elcom, a US flight case specialist and the company’s primary competitor. Today, Penn Elcom has UK manufacturing sites in Hastings (where the Salvagnini panel benders are located) and Tyne & Wear, as well as subsidiaries in 15 countries worldwide.

Among the specialisms at the Hastings facility are products for 19in racking systems, which are essentially standardised frames or enclosures used extensively in ‘stage technology’ for mounting multiple electronic equipment modules. The racking products manufactured at Hastings include cabinets, enclosures, shock-mount systems, rack strips/rails, shelves, drawers, panels and doors — all of which require folds.

The company had historically relied on a selection of 10 press brakes to undertake bending operations, installing its first of four Salvagnini panel benders in 2017. Highlighting the reasons for this change, Mr Willems said: “The manufacture of 19in racking solutions at Hastings commenced about seven years ago as we were having quality issues with products imported from China.

“We had some high-end press brakes from reputable manufacturers on site, but as demand grew, particularly for large panels, production became more challenging. For example, if you take a steel panel that is 1.5m high, weighs 15kg and contains 15 folds, it is physically difficult to manipulate it efficiently.

“I had long-known of Salvagnini panel benders, but always thought such advanced machines would be beyond my budget. However, one night I was on the internet looking at panel benders and curiosity got the better of me, so I made my first enquiry for a Salvagnini.

“It struck me as quite a big leap from a press brake to a Salvagnini panel bender,
but was pleasantly surprised when I learnt the price ranges. I subsequently sent Salvagnini three products that were proving difficult to fold using our press brakes. One of these — a cabinet corner post — was about 2m long, 2.5mm thick and had 10 folds. This part necessitated three lifts on a press brake, so our existing cycle time was around 15min — and we had quite a high reject rate.”

Massive savings
The trials showed that a Salvagnini panel bender could fold these parts in just 50sec, prompting Penn Elcom to invest in its first Salvagnini machine. Mr Willems said: “That was in 2017, and we now have four Salvagnini Lean-series panel benders at Hastings, as well as one in China.”

The Hastings site now houses a Salvagnini P1 (a ‘mini’ panel bender with a bend length of 1,250mm) and three P4lean automatic panel benders — the latest of which was installed in February this year. Of the 10 press brakes owned by Penn Elcom prior to the ‘panel bender era’, only three remain on site.

Mr Willems added: “Finding the skills to run press brakes is not easy, so the Salvagnini machines have also helped in that regard. All of our panel benders run 24/7, with typically one operator looking after two machines. Their reliability and repeatability has been outstanding from the start; we have zero rejects and I can see us adding more in the future — particularly as process flexibility is inherent in P4lean thanks to universal bending tools that automatically adapt to the panel geometry in-cycle, without machine down-time or manual re-tooling.”

With its ‘advanced cycles’, a machine such as the P4lean completes an average of 17 bends per min, although some of the Salvagnini machines at Penn Elcom feature options that boost capability even further.

For example, the CUT option enables the automatic cutting of different profile lengths, materials, thicknesses and shapes from a single blank, undertaking separation cuts after each sequence of bends. Furthermore, the special
V-score option can help deliver a tighter outside radius, while a special narrow blank-holder for the P-tool can help process smaller parts ‘deemed not possible on panel benders’.

Mr Willems suggests that if he had remained with press-brake technology his current lead times for cabinets would be as high as 16-20 weeks, with little potential to produce samples and prototypes; these are are an important part of business at Penn Elcom as the company is constantly developing new products to help spur further growth.

A good example is DoorJammer, a portable door security device that Mr Willems presented on the BBC television programme Dragons’ Den in 2017 (DoorJammer is now a fully incorporated company within the Penn Elcom Group).

He concluded: “Another example is the PBX1 parcel box. This offers a secure solution to unattended parcel delivery and is already selling in good numbers; but if, as expected, it starts selling in really high volumes, we would not cope without the Salvagnini panel benders.”