What Does A Quick Die Change Cart Look Like?

A quick die change cart from Lightning Time Savers makes it possible for one person to exchange dies from press to rack without ever getting out from behind the cart. 

A the time of this filming, the die catches had not been installed on the die. If they had been, you would have seen the push/pull arms automatically latching on to the die catches without any aid from the driver. 

There are many companies who have tried to copy our design, but because of patents, all other companies have failed to deliver the features, functionality, speed, safety, and affordability that only Lightning Time Savers' die carts can offer.

Justifying Quick Die Change

In order to justify the need for quick die change, you need to look at the big picture, which consists of all set-up costs, salaried work force, direct labor, indirect labor, WIP inventory, material handling, tool maintenance, flow, and inspection (among others).

Once you have identified your costs, your finance department should be able to arrive at the savings for your company based on estimated reduced changeover time, employee pay, number of employees involved in changeover, and how many changeovers will be performed a day.

Here is an example of a company’s actual savings after implementing quick die change:

          Before                                                      After

    130 minute changeover                       10 minute changeover

    1.5 people                                             2.0 people

    6 changeovers/day                              18 changeovers/day

    232 workdays/year                               232 workdays/year

     = $113,000/year                                   =$35,000/year

$113,000 - $35,000 = $78,000 Net Savings Per Year

At Lightning Time Savers, we guarantee a 50% reduction in changeover time for our clients, but we usually achieve a 75-80% reduction (with many cases achieving even more of a reduction). We also experience a 3 month payback in savings to pay for the initial investment spent on Q.D.C. equipment.

You will notice that these savings are obtained even with more employees working on the project. This is because after implementing quick die change, employees are able to concentrate on doing their job safer and faster. Workers are no longer beholden to performing unnecessary steps during the changeover, which results in not only faster changeovers, but more changeovers, which leads to more versatility overall for the plant as a whole.

After doing some simple number crunching, it is easy to see why so many of our clients are leaders in the manufacturing world.

What is Quick Die Change?

“To eliminate excess inventory, (metal stamping facilities) must have the capability to produce efficiently in small lot sizes. Therefore, setups that used to take hours must now take minutes.” - Gary Zunker, President of Lightning Time Savers

In order to attain the lean, efficient status needed to compete in today’s world of manufacturing, we must reduce die change time down to an absolute minimum;  therefore reducing the overall time that the press is down, maximizing the output of each press, and allowing smaller press shops the ability to compete in the global market. Through steps that include standardizing presses and dies, eliminating steps that waste time, and pre-staging, we can achieve our goal of minimum job change (the absolute minimum amount of time needed to change dies). This process, pioneered in America by Gary Zunker, President of Lightning Time Savers, is called Quick Die Change.

Quick Die Change can be attained by implementing either of the following steps:

    1. Purchase new press equipment with quick die change capabilities.

    2. Retrofit existing press equipment.

A combination of both processes is recommended for quickest, most immediate results. However, the second process is ideal for small operations that want to see results with the absolute minimum capital investment. 

For more information, contact Lightning Time Savers at (859) 687-0481.