Storm Currents News-Blog

Storm Copper Components’ Flex-Tooling - Custom-Fabricated Parts and Connectors.

Decatur, Tennessee (December 18, 2009) – At Storm Copper Components, the adage that "Time is Money" has been translated into customer savings through the use of Flex-Tooling equipment. This technologically advanced system speeds up the production of OEM copper connectors and eliminates the need for expensive hard die tooling costs.

Copper fabrication using a traditional punching machine is capable of producing one hole or notch per stroke, making the production of copper connectors requiring multiple punches time consuming. While high-output presses can produce a completed copper part with numerous holes and notches with every stroke of the machine, the down side is high tooling costs. This mass production capability is realized by the use of expensive hard dies, but when you need to produce 100 connectors per minute, this is the way to go. As anyone in production knows, high volume and quality are two wonderful factors when married together on a single machine.

The investment in Flex-Tooling has proven to be such a marriage for Storm Copper, especially beneficial to OEM customers in the Solar and other alternative energy markets where fast turnaround and cost reduction can make a huge difference between profit and loss. For younger companies and startups, flex tooling is a major competitive advantage, as the cost of traditional custom tooling parts is significantly lower or eliminated.

According to co-owner, Dan Kitts, "Producing hard dies for copper fabrication is very costly, ranging between $5,000 and $10,000 per set. In order to justify that cost it must be tied to a very large order to amortize the cost to a reasonable per unit price. With our equipment, we create a top and bottom template, and then install the required punches and notching components which function exactly like a hard die. And when the project is completed, we uninstall the reusable components and put the templates into our collection of several hundred already on hand."

Storm Copper Components also has the capability of producing its own templates, so there’s no lag time waiting for a third party to supply templates or tooling. Another competitive advantage of flex tooling is reduced setup costs and faster production time, meaning that Storm’s OEM customers are able to order on short notice and receive their copper parts much faster. "Storm’s Flex-Tooling capability becomes a winner for every company downstream. And, unless there is a very unusual aspect to an order, our customers never receive a tooling charge," Kitts said.

Another key advantage to Flex-Tooling is reduced tooling lead-time. Typically hard die setup lead times run into weeks, if not months, while Storm’s production time for a template is typically a couple of days. This rapid production and reasonable costing of copper connectors has proven very advantageous to companies currently working to meet the demand of developing new alternative energy sources, most notably solar power. Recently, Storm has experienced a dramatic increase in parts ordered by OEMs involved in the manufacture of solar combiner boxes, inverters, solar panels and other energy-critical components.

Storm Copper Components Co. specializes in the manufacture of custom copper connectors for the wireless, telecommunications, power and alternative energy markets, serving OEM’s, electrical contractors and system installers for almost 20 years.

For more information, or to schedule an interview with Dan Kitts, please call Dave Krikorian at 423-506-4178 or email dkrikorian@stormcopper.com.