Above: Customers of Willbanks Metals are requiring the company to do a lot more to deliver shapes, profiles, laser cut tubing, ultra flat sheet and more so they can move these products directly into production and assembly.

December 2022- Investments in technology and processes expected to pay off with high productivity, improved quality, greater market share.

     Customers of Willbanks Metals are requiring the company to do a lot more to deliver shapes, profiles, laser cut tubing, ultra flat sheet and more so they can move these products directly into production and assembly.

     Customers of Willbanks Metals are requiring the company to do a lot more to deliver shapes, profiles, laser cut tubing, ultra flat sheet and more so they can move these products directly into production and assembly.

Metals distributors and processors are well versed in market cycles. The higher prices rise, the further they fall. The greater the material shortfall in a given cycle, the harder producers work to fill the void. To protect themselves during both the highs and the lows, service center owners and operators know they have to offer more than simple cutting to size, packaging and next-day delivery. The aim is to stay competitive by differentiating and anticipating customers’ future needs.

Willbanks Metals, Fort Worth, Texas, is one of those shops whose third-generation owners understand that well-planned capital projects are vital to remaining not only relevant but also in the vanguard.

“Our investments are driven by increasing demand. Customers are requesting that we add more capacity or new capabilities to serve their needs,” says Chief Commercial Officer Ryan Letz. “They want us to do as much downstream as we can.”

The company has installed two tube lasers and an automated press brake during 2022, and ordered a stretcher-leveling line to be installed in 2023.

Founded in 1974, Willbanks Metals stocks sheet, plate and structural steel (angles, beams, channels, flat bar, pipe and tubing). Processes include laser and plasma cutting, forming, plate and structural section rolling, sawing, and welding. Its typical customers build utility and other commercial trailers; make equipment for natural gas, wind and solar power; perform general manufacturing; and fabricate structural elements for building projects. Willbanks normally ships within a 300-mile radius from Fort Worth but serves customers as far as Ohio and South Carolina.

DOING MORE

“Our philosophy is to add value downstream,” says Letz. “If we could add value to 100 percent of our sold tonnage, we would.”

The company installed its first tube laser, a Mazak Fabri Gear 220, in mid-October and will install a Mazak Neo 400 model tube laser before year’s end. “One is built for smaller parts; the other is for bigger profiles, up to 16 inches,” he says.

“We have a long products distribution center where we handle tubing, angle iron, merchant bar, beam and pipe. We had not been offering laser cutting service at all. Our customers asked us why we don’t do more with the product.”

The straight-head laser cutting machine will complement standard saw cutting. The machine can cut to length, perform miter cutting, tap and drill holes, and cut custom profiles. “It can do so much,” Letz says.

“Most customers don’t know that the tube laser exists. They do everything by hand: Receive a bundle, saw it themselves and drill holes”—all separate processes performed at separate work stations. An operator “has to set up manually to measure and drill. A lot of time is spent on manual processes. We can now perform all these steps as a one-stop shop. We sell the tube and provide intricate cuts with a lot better, and more consistent, quality” than manual operations would normally be able to accomplish.

“There is no doubt that this is a profit center,” Letz acknowledges. Willbanks Metals built its reputation by adding value to plate and sheet. “We process coil on a cut-to-length line; we do plasma and laser cutting. There is a further step with press brakes and rolling machines. Now, we are offering new capabilities for long products, which brings us one step closer to the customer.”

Letz says Willbanks already had space available for laser tube cutting operations in its long products distribution center. The company “is blessed with qualified machine operators,” he says, with whom “we do a lot of cross training. Several of our people had experience operating flat lasers, so we put them into training to expand their knowledge. They are excited to learn a new machine.”

One major benefit is the speed at which tube processing now occurs. “There are so many variables to each part. The burning time on a tube laser takes one-fourth the time to do it manually,” Letz says. “We have already sold out the new capacity. We have enough demand to put us at two shifts on each machine by the end of the year.”

PRESS BRAKE OPERATION

The second large investment is an Accurpress with OctoCrane—an automated press brake integrated with a crane system. The crane will pick up a sheet and the press performs the forming that’s needed.

The finished part is automatically transferred into a stack with no human operator needed. The crane system itself takes up a 65-foot by 20-foot space in Willbanks’ sheet processing area. “There is a grid. We program it with AutoCAD, telling the machine what section of the grid it should go to access the material,” according to Letz.

     Brothers Eric and Brian Letz are investing in Willbanks Metals’ processing capabilities.

A forklift driver will place the stacks of raw material into the grid. The crane will pick individual sheets, place it in the press brake; the brake will bend the material and then the crane stacks it in a finished part area.

“It does require a lot of programming on the front end,” Letz explains. However, “we do a lot of repeat business,” so regular bending jobs will be accessible at the push of a button. “This is a lifetime approach to performing this service,” he says.

“With the parts we currently make, there are one to two men at each press brake, requiring them to pick up each piece by hand, perform the bend and then stack it. From a safety standpoint and considering human wear and tear, this is exciting.”

Letz adds, “We have enough orders to keep this machine busy two shifts a day.”

LEVELING UP

The final key investment that will expand Willbanks Metals’ capabilities is a stretcher- leveler. Executives were long hoping to purchase a mothballed railcar manufacturing plant across the street from the service center. The property sale finally went through this year. “It has good rail access and fits our need to replace our current leveler.”

For example, the facility already has crane capacity up to 30 tons, meaning it can handle mill-sized coils arriving by rail from U.S. and Mexican steel producers.

“We will receive coils, stretch-level and cut them to length for our own fabrication customers and for distribution,” Letz says. “In the same building, we expect to expand our laser and plasma cutting. We will have a fabrication division in there, as well.”

With these decisions, “we are literally doubling our footprint in terms of space and virtually doubling our cut-to-length sheet and plate capacity.” The new leveler will go in during the second quarter of 2023.

“We had multiple customers who requested stretch-leveled or temper-passed steel,” because the material has to be absolutely flat for further processing. “We weren’t able to offer that until now. It’s another part of our downstream strategy to add more quality,” Letz says.

“Our main focus is offering higher quality products. We have no doubt that we will obtain more customers who want these products,” he continues. “We expect to gain a lot of new business” following these investments. - MM