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Fast forward 22 years and Hawkins is proudly accepting the Small Business Administration award as Mississippi's 'Small Businessman Of The Year for 2003.' His Hawkeye Industries, was just eight years old at the time, but it had established a reputation as the premier sheet metal fabrication job shop in Mississippi. An ISO9001:2000 certified business, Hawkeye had 24 employees and 11 state-of-the-art machine tools running 24 hours a day. It was then, and remains today, a showplace for the latest laser, welding punching, press brake and CAD/CAM technology.
A year later, Hawkeye's steel supplier brought in sheets of a new material called SCS and asked Bryan to try it. "I wasn't looking for, nor was I expecting productivity gains from my steel -- I
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Bryan Hawkins at the control of his Trumpf L3040 Laser Cell - the first
one installed in the United States and one of three lasers now cutting
SCS in the 54,000 sq. ft. Hawkeye Industries manufacturing center. |
wanted better paintability," he recalls.
"I certainly got that. Our painter loves
SCS because he can use a less
aggressive wash cycle and still get |
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a great finish. So I told that salesman |
to bring in more SCS, but consistently getting enough sheets in the right gauges was a problem. Not enough SCS was being produced at the time."
By 2006, the SCS supply was stable so Hawkeye started using it exclusively for certain parts. "That's when SCS took our productivity to a new level," observes Hawkins. "New laser units like ours are fast to start with, but SCS gives us another 15 to 25% speed improvement over P&O. And stretcher-leveled SCS parts are so flat they fit up better for welding and assembly. Our products are more accurate, our scrap is down, and our customers love it."
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Hawkins points out how the SCS fabrication guidelines are key to gaining such advantages. "We find the settings for laser cutting, welding and pre-treating SCS are very important and, fortunately, not difficult to implement at all. But we must also be sure our customer is aware of them for any processing they do with the parts we supply. For example, following the SCS welding guidelines we get less spatter and better weld penetration than we can with P&O, but one customer wasn't happy welding SCS until we provided them with the SCS guidelines to follow."
Though he can't put a hard number to it, he also sees SCS' cleanliness as enhancing productivity. "We're kinda anal about keeping our shop clean and SCS makes it much easier. Rust resistance is also a big benefit. After handling and lasering P&O, we'd often have rust develop, even in our climate-controlled shop. Not with SCS."
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Hawkins summarizes, "I've learned a lot since that failed tool and die shop, and I've got a 'hawk's eye' and a hound's nose for productivity and quality advantages in manufacturing. I'll sniff out the best equipment, the best process flow and great people to make it all work. When I sniffed out a better steel in SCS, our people adapted our processes and our top-notch equipment to get the most from it. The result: our work cells run faster, our deliveries are better and quality has improved. All from switching to a better material that doesn't cost a dime more than what we were using before. For someone used to spending $1 million to $2 million a year for the newest machine tool technology, the economics of SCS are a huge advantage for me, my employees, and for my customers."
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SCS is considered an 'environmentally responsible' technology. It uses no caustic acids or chemicals, creates no hazardous waste . . . it even uses less energy than pickling. Recent improvements to the SCS water filtration system have made the process even more 'eco-friendly' and created a novel opportunity for recycling that, frankly, we'd like your help with.
First, some background. Mill scale and rust removed by SCS brushing is flushed away by jets of ordinary water. The water is recirculated for re-use, so it's filtered to remove impurities -- a job for the patented water filtration system developed for this purpose. This simple, effective system uses a gravity filter to separate out heavier impurities, then passes the water through a 'bag house' type canister filter to capture remaining impurities. The system works great, but brushing especially dirty material or running three shift operation uses a lot of filter media. Used media isn't harmful -- it's disposed of in an ordinary landfill. But that's not so 'eco friendly,' so we started looking for improvements.
The best solution we found was discrete isolation of ferrous particles using a magnetic separator. This compact device, shown at the right, is placed before the gravity filter and is
highly efficient in removing the ferrous material, and only the ferrous material, from the water stream. It works like this:
Water travels up through the separator vessel at low velocity, passing several bars containing permanent magnets. The ferrous particles accumulate on the surface of the bars as the cleansed water moves up the chamber and out to the gravity filter tank. At timed intervals, the separator slides a wiping mechanism down the bars to remove the particles, pushing them into the solids discharge port. The port's valve is automatically opened and the accumulated solids are discharged into a collection drum.
This fully automatic separator is now standard on all SCS filtration systems. A final stage media filter is still required to capture the non-ferrous impurities, but using the magnetic separator dramatically reduces the volume of media consumed.
The isolation of the ferrous particles, which emerge as a very pure, uniform gray powder (photo below) begs the question: "What to do with it?" Our very preliminary research turned
up some interesting (and unusual) possibilities:
- a 'filler' for animal feed to provide an iron nutrient,
- the ferrous layer of magnetic recording tape.
But honestly, we don't have much expertise in this area, so
we are appealing to our readers to share their ideas on how this iron oxide powder can best be recycled. As an incentive,
TMW will contribute $1000 to a charity chosen by the first reader who suggests a practical use that's ultimately put
into practice. Contact Alan Mueth -- AlanM@thematwks.com with your ideas and we'll publish the best ones in a future
issue of SCS UPDATE.
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The iron oxide particles discharged from the SCS
magnetic separation filter are practically a powder. |
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Fans of the campy BATMAN TV show from the late 60s recall that whenever a situation was too much for Gotham City's finest, Commissioner Gordon would pick up the 'Bat Phone' to summon the Caped Crusader to save the day. Very convenient arrangement.
We'd like to offer that same convenience to SCS users needing quick answers to their questions, but we couldn't find any red rotary phones. So we made the Internet age equivalent of an SCS Bat Phone -- the SCS Customer Support Button. You'll now find this red pushbutton on the left side of every page of the SCS web site and an equivalent one on the TMW web site. Just click on the button and a window will open with contact info and an
e-mail link to your primary support contact. They'll get the e-mail right away (we're Blackberry-enabled) and respond almost as quick.
Sorry, they won't be in tights and capes, but our dynamic duo of Alan Mueth and Rick Thomas will answer your questions and, in some cases, practically help to save your day,
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