Idaho Steel is a machine fabricator established in 1918 in Idaho Falls. Idaho Steel manufactures, maintains and customizes machines used to render potatoes in an almost infinite variety of sizes and shapes. If you’ve had french fries, potato salad, mashed potatoes or tater tots recently, odds are they were produced with an Idaho Steel machine. According to the company, it’s not uncommon to find Idaho Steel equipment that was manufactured in the 1960s in full-time operation around the world.
Challenges:
Idaho Steel’s emphasis on customization and meeting its varied customer needs. “We needed to come up with a way to build shapes quickly for our customers,” says Alan Bradshaw, Idaho Steel CEO. “We studied the alternatives and made a decision to purchase the 3D Systems machine. Since then, we’ve printed hundreds of parts out of that machine to use in our machines.”
From the beginning, it was understood that Idaho Steel would make no compromises in quality for the sake of speed.
“We are big on the quality of equipment we send out with our name on it,” says Christensen. “We are a full fabrication shop and while our competitors may be more dependent on sub-contractors, we control how individual parts are made and come together. 3D printing gives us more control over individual parts, which in the end helps us deliver superior equipment in a much faster timeframe.”
Solutions:
Idaho Steel purchased a 3D Systems ProX 500 SLS 3D printer to manufacture key production parts for its fabricating machines. The ProX 500 produces ready-to-use functional parts and complete assemblies for a variety of aerospace, automotive, medical, consumer and industrial machining applications. It uses DuraForm ProX, a durable nylon material, to produce components that equal or surpass injection-molding quality.
“SLS 3D printing enables us to design for superior strength and durability,” says Jon Christensen, marketing and sales manager at Idaho Steel. “For those new to it, the idea of ‘printing’ parts may not convey the fact that when finished, these parts are solid plastic. Parts can also be designed for added strength in ways that are not possible through traditional machining.”
One of Idaho Steel’s prime applications for 3D printing is customizing forming inserts and pistons for its Nex-Gem Former machine that forms potato products in different shapes. The forming inserts and pistons were formerly made from five parts, machined out of plastic and held together with 25 or more fasteners. Using multiple CNC operations and manual assembly, it took up to 250 hours — 25 work days — to complete a set of 16 forming pistons.
Idaho Steel now makes the same number of parts in 90 hours of virtually unattended, continuous run-time on the ProX 500 machine.
“The machine can work through the night or over a weekend and the forming pistons require only about three to four hours of manual labor,” says Christensen. “Not only does 3D printing save time, it also frees up the CNC machines that would be tied up doing this job for 25 days.”
The forming insert and piston are made by the 3D printer as a complete, single assembly using 3D Systems’ food-safe DuraForm ProX material.
Benefits:
Christensen says that while Idaho Steel produces specialized machines, almost any machine shop can benefit from 3D printing, especially when it comes to the all-important imperative of delivering a quality part on-time under strict deadlines.
“One of the machining industry’s greater obstacles is lead time,” says Christensen. “A customer may have a preference for a supplier of a certain piece of equipment but if that supplier is unable to deliver in time for a project the customer will have to go another way.
“A good example of lead-time pressure is our forming pistons. When our customers get approval for projects they need these pieces, which could be any shape you can imagine, right away. Some of the shapes are fairly complex and could take up to a month to CNC machine, but we can reduce that time to a week with the ProX 500.”
Faster delivery, better quality, greater customization, more reliability — these are things with which any machine-making company can identify, no matter what specialty products its machines produce.
“We are no longer limited by our standard and traditional machining tools,” says Idaho Steel CEO Bradshaw. “We are only limited by the imagination and creativity of our design group.”