After just a couple of years of providing sales and service operations in India, Fagor Arrasate, the renowned press and stamping systems manufacturer, is now taking the next logical step of expansion, reports Huned Contractor

It is the timing that matters. Having firmly established its sales and service network in India for its stamping systems and other technologies over the past two years, Spanish company Fagor Arrasate is now gradually moving towards setting up its manufacturing facility at Shivale on the Pune-Bangalore highway which, as its country manager Manish Seth informs, will be developed and green-lit for operation after the company has achieved "critical mass" in India. It's a model that Fagor Arrasate has successfully implemented in China where a production facility was started only after it had built up an impressive line-up of customers. The company, formerly called TACI, was founded in 1957 and belongs to the Mondragon Corporation.

Fagor Arrasate is a world specialist in design, manufacture and supply of presses and stamping systems and builds both mechanical and hydraulic presses with capacities of between 630 kN and 1,50,000 kN. The company is also especially qualified for providing complete stamping systems of not only the press but also all the necessary peripherals such as feeding line, transfers, robotisation, dies, etc. "In this way we can provide our customers with integrated and tested turnkey systems. We also have specialised software programs for simulating the movement of our presses and calculating the high-precision link drives which enable us to supply the best productive systems," says Javier Torres, the company's Asia director during his recent visit to Pune.

Elaborating about transfer presses, Torres says that these were introduced as a response to the need for totally automated, labour-free component manufacture. "At the heart of the installation is the transfer, or the element which moves the parts from one station to another in a sequential process until forming the part to be carried out. Fagor Arrasate's transfer is a servo-electronic transfer with high performance and occupying a minimum of space, allowing easier access to the installation's different accessories. The installation can be blank-fed or fed directly from the coil via a feeding line composed of an uncoiler, a straightener and feeding pinch rolls. The installation of an electronic transfer gives us the possibility of varying the number of steps or operations for each piece, allowing a great flexibility in this installation and enabling it to produce a wide range of parts," Torres explains.

In India, Fagor Arrasate has been particularly focusing on the rapidly emerging automotive sector and already supplies its products and systems to major OEMs such as Tata Motors, Ford, Ashok Leyland, Volkswagen, etc. Here, the main business is of the presses. "The manufacture of large parts, mainly for car bodywork, requires the use of various presses by means of which the different part-forming operations are carried out. Our line has a stamping press, either double action or single action, aided by a cushion and a number of subsequent presses, depending on the number of operations needed to manufacture the parts. At present, the lines are totally automated and the blank-loading operations, carried out by a blank destacker and transfer between presses by either robots or other means, are no longer manual," Torres states. At the heart of all this innovation and the tremendous amount of research and development carried out at its headquarters. "For example," Torres says, "a new concept has been developed in the area of transferring shaped blanks, such as the body sides, hoods, roofs and double doors units, through large press tandem lines. The collaborative work between Fagor Arrasate and Kuka Systems has generated a new concept of performance from a press line operating with highly versatile robots delivering output ratings exceeding conventional systems. The Wave-Line system enables the presses to work in a continuous mode, thus allowing the robots to follow the motion of the presses automatically even when the line speed is increased or reduced. The advantages are seen in programming the set-up of automation and die recipes as well as reduction of maintenance costs and downtime."

Another area of specialisation is the design and manufacturing of sheet metal cutting and processing lines as well as systems for manufacturing tubes and roll-formed steel. "Fagor manufactures cutting lines for processing coils with widths of up to 2,500 mm and thicknesses of between 0.05 mm and 30 mm. The coils can weigh up to 50,000 kg. The installations for the processing of blanks are also produced," Torres explains. Elaborating about the work being done in designing of new systems, Torres says that the engineers working in the company's technical department have decades of experience in designing reversible rolling mills, skin pass mills, temper mills, tension levelling lines, painting lines, galvanising lines, aluminium casting equipment, degreasing lines, etc.

"All the design work is totally computerised and the solutions are tailored to the needs of each particular customer and application. The experience built up by Fagor over the years also enables us to provide modernisation and plant consultancy services to improve processes and optimise installations. Fagor offers a full assistance and training service during the set-up and start-up of the lines and rolling mills. The process control and modelling systems are also integrated, with a team specialising in processing lines and rolling mills," he adds.

Revealing the kind of success that Fagor Arrasate has achieved in India, Torres recalls an order placed by Ford Motors in December 2011 to design, manufacture and supply a press blanking line for installation at the car maker's plant in Tamil Nadu.

This has been equipped to process high strength steel of 650 MPa in thickness up to 2.5 mm and coils as wide as 2,000 mm. The parts to be cut in this blanking line can be shaped and their maximum length can be 4,100 mm being stacked in bundles of 10 tonnes. The lines are very productive with a speed of 90 m/min and the ability to reach 70 parts per minute. "It is this approach to developing customised solutions that has helped Fagor Arrasate spread out across countries like the U.S, Brazil, Germany, Russia, Mexico and China. India was bound to follow," Torres says.

(Contact: Mr Manish Seth, Country Manager, Fagor Arrasate, New Delhi 110 020. Tel: 011-4064 9001)