When you’re cutting tough materials like steel superalloys and exotic metals, you need a bandsaw at the top of its game.
That won’t happen without regular maintenance from machinists and manufacturing workers, however, and getting it isn’t a given in today’s often short-staffed metalworking plants.
Roughly 95 percent of the businesses that own bandsaws have rarely—or never—performed yearly preventive maintenance, says Raul Gonzalez, senior manager of the sawing solutions group at toolmaker Lenox, a subsidiary of Stanley Black & Decker.
To bridge the gap, Lenox—whose specialties include bandsaws—is introducing fee-based inspection and maintenance services. It’s a valuable option for metalworking businesses, many of which have eliminated in-house maintenance departments over the past 20-plus years, using leaner operating systems to buoy profitability.
The smaller staffs they employ as a result, combined with sticky inflation and a widening shortage in the labor market, have left them without the resources to handle equipment upkeep while meeting client delivery timetables.
“In many cases, bandsaw owners don’t stop to think about maintenance because they’re focused on keeping up 24/7 production schedules,” Gonzalez says. “They’re reluctant to shut down the equipment.”
Those owners have responded enthusiastically to Lenox’s new service options, however, realizing that inspection and maintenance can help them avoid breakdowns that disrupt schedules and may damage cutting tools as well as equipment and workpieces.
“Very few people in the country know how to work on bandsaws, although there are thousands and thousands of them, and if owners just patch them whenever there’s a problem, the remedy may make the problem worse,” Gonzalez says.
A High Price Tag for Bandsaw Breakdowns
The initial service packages from Lenox, available nationwide now, are the 13-point inspection of equipment including guides, band wheels, hydraulic systems and sawing fluid, and the 20 Point+ program that wraps in preventive maintenance services such as hydraulic oil and filter changes, lubrication and some parts replacement.
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