TESTIMONIAL - HME Inc.

THE STORY

HME, Inc.

HME, Inc. was established in 1996 by Jon Haas, PE. Since its inception, HME has grown from a small operation in Jon's garage to its current 57,000 square foot manufacturing facility with over 100 employees. Founded on the ideal of providing high quality custom metal fabrication and structural steel to the construction industry at a competitive price, HME has become an industry leader in the Midwest. Voortman traveled to the USA to interview Jon and to have a closer look at the Voortman machines they invested in.

U-shape layout with new Voortman equipment

HME brainstormed on ways to get the facility they wanted to and one day it just popped up in their heads that they could make a U-shape configuration work and get all the equipment they wanted. "I think we owe a lot of that expertise to the Voortman people and helping us work through how we could best fit equipment into our facility and make it run as efficient as possible". The U-shape layout or configuration with the new equipment consists of a robotic coping machine, a combined drilling (V630) and sawing (VB1250) line and a shot blaster (VSB1500).

Higher capacity, quality and satisfaction

"The Voortman equipment definitely has much more intelligence than competitive machines. It is amazing how the software controls everything. Once a part enters the system you literally can forget about it, until it comes of the outfeed transfers." We feel that the Voortman equipment really increased our quality and the efficiency of handling our materials."

Service satisfaction

HME is also very satisfied about the installation of their equipment and the way their service requests are being handled by Voortman.

"After the install, support was there, you need some help, you make a quick phone call and typically within no time they are dialed in into your system and then you have this technician on the other end of the computer basically, diagnosing with your operator standing their at the console operating whatever functions the technician needs you to operate. 98 / 99% of the time within that first session of online diagnostics, your machine is up and running."

A continuing partnership

Since 2012 HME has been using Voortman machines to produce their parts. The company's growth has led to further investments in the machinery fleet, including a V631/VB1250 drill/mill saw combination, V2000 cambering machine and a V325 heavy plate processing machine. The recently installed a fully automated Painting line, equipped with a pre-heater and drying tunnel.

Milling capabilities and heavy plate porcessing

The addition of a Voortman V631 drilling and milling machine really balanced their workload. Scott King explains: "It adds additional milling capabilities that we don't have with our other drills. So having that availability to mill those profiles really allows us to balance our workload and get more throughput."

With a massive drilling head and 20-station automatic toolchanger, the Voortman V325 is a must-have heavy plate drilling, cutting and milling machine.
Scott emphasizes the importance: "The V325 has been a great addition to the rest of our equipment. We can process up to four inch plate 120 inches wide, 240 inches long."
A big advantage of a Voortman passthrough plate processing machine is automatic unloading of finished parts. Scott believes it adds great value: "After the part is cut, it drops onto the conveyor system and it conveys it out while the machine continues to process the rest of the material."
They make use of the full range of the machine's capabilities, drilling and milling in one operation and beveling the edges of cut parts. "Specific jobs require a very tight tolerances on some holes that are too big for the drill spindle. So in those scenarios we will mill those holes, also smaller diameter slots and thicker plates", says Scott

Fully Automated painting

The company's latest investment was a fully automatic painting line. Scott explains the components of this line: "It's an automated paint line with pre-heat tunnel. Material rolls through there, gets the material up to temperature then goes into the paint booth where it gets painted all the way around. Then proceeds into a drying tunnel to help paint cure and then out to an automated outfeed.

HME has been working with a lot of infill beams that don't require any parts. These beams are ideal for being painted with high efficiency. On average, HME runs between 40 to 50 beams on a typical shift. Scott is enthusiastic about Voortman's unique automated material handling: "You load the material onto the end feed, you put it on your buffer and they can tell it how many pieces of which profile you have. The sensors and the material handling will come and find the material. They'll separate it out to the right distance to allow for the paint to get on. All four sides of the material proceeds, to move it up to the datum line and then roll through the machine to be painted."

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