New GEKA Hydracrop machine brings substantial savings to production process.

In the UK, the demand for stair lifts has grown tenfold over the last 20 years as people progressively live longer and lead fuller lives. Increasingly, many people now opt to stay in their homes in later years, but for some, physical restrictions will make a stair lift a vital requirement.

This fact has inevitably given rise to the need to produce more stair lifts, which in turn has fuelled component manufacturing in this sector.

The flat bars are stacked after initial cropping

Fabricon Design, located in Ashton-Under-Lyne, Lancashire, produce in the region of 40,000 components for stair lifts every month. The company specialise in 3Dimensional computer design and prototype production and sampling, however, the surge in the stair lift market has prompted the company to invest in a GEKA HYDRACROP 80S system from Prosaw, to accurately guillotine 90mm x 6mm mild steel flat bars to length. The system is fitted with an ALRS automated flat bar feeder, which simply eliminates what can be the cumbersome manipulation of the bars.

After cropping the bars to one metre lengths, they are transferred to a CNC machine, where they are drilled and tapped, before being reloaded onto the GEKA system for final cropping, producing individual components of just 50mm in length.

The installation of the GEKA system has resulted in a number of substantial benefits in the form of cost savings as well as in increased production capacity for the company.

Explained Managing Director, Mark Bushdyhan "We previously utilised our CNC machine to crop the bars, but since we invested in the GEKA system to take over this process, we have seen savings in the region of £20,000 per annum as a result. The acquisition of the GEKA system has also allowed us to almost double our production capacity for this product."

Long narrow bars are fed into the GEKA Hydracrop 80S machine using the ALRS Automated Feeder system

He added "Since we took delivery of the GEKA system, we've found it a very easy and low-cost machine to maintain, whilst Prosaw have been very helpful in customising the software to suit our production requirements as well as providing us with excellent service."