Eliminating Cupper Press Vibrations at Stamping Press OEM

Project Overview

Farrat provides an optimal solution for eliminating cupper press vibrations while saving 72 tonnes of concrete and 46 m2 of isolation material through efficient design and installation.

The manufacturing industry generates high energy consumption and carbon emissions which in turn has a significant impact on the ecological environment. Therefore, it is necessary to develop measures and strategies designed to reduce emissions whilst improving the safety of staff using impact machinery and heavy plant equipment.

Farrat have demonstrated carbon footprint in factories can be significantly reduced by considering alternative methods to isolate foundations supporting heavy plant machinery.

The Challenge

The customer, a pioneer in manufacturing can making machinery, reached out to Farrat to design an isolation system for a new press being developed at their facility. The traditional way of isolating this type of impact machinery is to support it with an isolated foundation, consisting of a concrete inertia block and isolators surrounding it. This popular configuration was designed and supplied by Farrat as it offers several advantages. It adds mass to the system, lowers its centre of gravity and distributes the loads evenly to the isolators placed below, helping to reduce the movement of the machinery and stabilise it by avoiding rocking.

After a few years of development, the press was ready to be commercialised. However, the first factory to integrate this new machine into its production line could not build traditional foundations due to specific on-site constraints. Therefore, we decided to design bespoke mounts to be installed under the feet of the press for this specific project. It was essential that the bespoke mounts provided both, adequate damping and limit lateral movement of the press.

The Solution

Our Engineers were able to design bespoke Isoblocs, made of vertical and lateral isolators within steel housings, offering isolation in three directions. Measurements of the dynamic forces have highlighted different levels of energy applied on each foot, and Farrat have selected various grades of isolators for each Isobloc to compensate for those discrepancies. Once the performance of the newly made Isoblocs had been validated, the press was ready to be installed in the factory.

Similar vibration measurements were taken with the press operating at 200 RPM, at the manufacturer’s premises with the machine installed on the Isoblocs and the isolated foundation, and in the factory with the press simply supported by the Isoblocs. The vibration amplitudes resulting from the latter configuration are 32 % lower on the feet of the machine, and 55% lower on the surrounding floor.

Although the grounds conditions were different between the manufacturer’s premises and the factory (soil mostly made of clay and rock respectively), which might be a limitation regarding this comparison exercise, it is still very encouraging to see that the bespoke Isoblocs used alone to support the press have resulted in lower level of vibration within the machine as well as transmitted to the environment. Beyond these results, not using an isolated foundation saved 72 tonnes of concrete and 46 m2 of isolation material, greatly reducing the carbon footprint.

Partner Profile

We partnered directly with our customer who specialise in designing, developing, and manufacturing high-performance machinery for the metal packaging industry. They focus on creating equipment to produce beverage cans, food cans, and aerosol cans. Renowned for their commitment to innovation and precision engineering their products include metal forming and finishing machinery used in the manufacturing process of these cans.