M-Levy Oy is enhancing its production with an investment in new bending technology. The P4Lean-2120 panel bender in Salvagnini’s model range brings more efficiency to the work and transfers new products at the factory into the sphere of automated manufacturing.

M-Levy is a sheet metal house operating in the Muurame industrial village, started in 1992.

Operations began with blank manufacturing with a punching center, but soon expanded into welding, laser cutting and press brake bending.

The company takes a comprehensive approach to manufacturing.

“We make highly refined goods and serve from product development all the way to production and the finished product,” tells the younger generation Managing Director Niko Puhakka. He has been at the helm of the family company since 2019. Father Jouni Puhakka continues as Chairman of the Board.

Investments in the machine base

M-Levy has grown at a steady pace in recent years.

Growth is the result not only of demand from familiar customers, but of new customer relationships enabled by technology investments.

Automation has been invested in briskly over the years, combination technology of laser cutting and punching is in use, and recently the company has, for example, strengthened its flat laser cutting capacity and also invested in tube laser technology.

The premises have expanded into several buildings and to the current 6000 square meters. One central step in the company’s operations was the investment in surface treatment a few years ago with the commissioning of its own powder coating factory.

M-Levy now operates with the work input of about 40 people. Annual revenue has grown with the growth of the degree of refinement in the last few years from the level of six million euros to the current nine million. Today also The Finnish Defence Forces is one of the customers.

Modern automation for bending

Bending work at M-Levy is done with a panel bender and press brakes.
As part of further making its production more efficient, the company recently updated its panel bender, which had been in use since the end of the last decade, to modern era with its new technology investment

“It is a replacement investment, through which we aimed for more efficiency and functionalities for bending work. The quality possibilities of automatic-type production and the transfer of the manufacture of new products from manual press brake bending to the automatic machine were central goals, also a customer requirement was in the background in the matter,” Puhakka says.

After comparisons, tests, the company ended up in its panel bender investment with the technology of a manufacturer familiar to the company, that is Salvagnini.

“This turned out for us in the comparisons and tests, in terms of its properties, to be the most suitable alternative for us. The familiar brand made the transition in its part flexible.”

In the process the previous P4Xe changed to the P4Lean-2120 model and the old machine soon moved to continue its life cycle in other landscapes.

“The factory bought the machine, reconditioned it and sold it onward. In this case a new home was found in Brazil. Arrangements of this kind with old machines are quite typical, because Salvagnini panel benders have a functioning aftermarket,” tells Pasi Pitkänen from Fredko, Salvagnini’s Finnish representative that delivered the machine.

With versatile equipment

For practical work, the new machine of M-Levy was built, in terms of its equipment and options, as a package thought for versatile needs.

Automation ensures quality, additional features enable special work.

At M-Levy, punched and cut blanks are produced with several punching and cutting cells.

Nestings are made by minimizing waste material, so the pieces are placed freely in different directions on the sheet, without taking rolling directions into account. Thus, in the next work phase of the process, that is bending, there must be methods by which the varying surface rigidities of the cut blanks are ensured, due to different rolling directions, material types and thicknesses.

Here Salvagnini’s patented MAC3.0 feature (Material Adaptive Compensation) of the panel bender helps. It measures during each blank’s bending cycle the change in springback caused by material differences and corrects the angle to the right one at once.

Special functions for production

A large number of special functions diversifying production were selected along.

The ABA bending tool enables length adjustments without settings regardless of batch size,

for making welding or locking tabs as well as other discontinuous bends, the panel bender was in turn equipped with the patented CLA-SIM segmented blade solution and for positive and negative bends.

“The length of the segmented blade is adjusted programmatically from the length of 122.4 mm to the length of 1417.8 mm in 10.2 mm steps. In this way different tabs can be run through the bending cell without setting times only with programmatic changes, which can also be made with the help of office software in connection with part programming,” Pasi Pitkänen says.

M-Levy’s P4Lean-2120, like almost all Lean panel benders delivered to Finland in recent years, is also equipped with the Bend and Cut (Cut Option) feature, because with it, the suitability of different bendable pieces grows significantly.

“As typical examples are among other things narrow profiles bent manually with press brakes or small fastener or support hook applications previously implemented for example with press technology, with mass-customized dimensions.”

Automatically from a 3D model

The machine is at the same time a new-generation package also in terms of programming features.

With the help of the office programming software’s StreamBendAuto program module, a bending program can be created directly from a 3D model automatically.

The safety check of the program can after this be done quickly with the simulation program of the programming software, after which the program is sent over the network to the work queue of the P4Lean panel bender.

The machine is also equipped with smart sensors and data collection, which enables smooth production monitoring and maintenance actions.

“One good feature of the machine’s hybrid electric servo technology is also very low energy consumption. Compared with the previous machine, in use up to 70–80 percent less energy is consumed,” states Pasi Pitkänen.

According to Niko Puhakka, the panel bender automation investment makes M-Levy’s operations more efficient and gives in its part new possibilities for future development.

“We are still aiming for growth, and for future competitiveness automation and modern technology are central core factors,” Niko Puhakka says.