Perforated metal specialist RMIG Group was able to provide a rapid response on 50,000 complex circuit-board housings for an advanced server system by planning the production onto its new Amada CNC punch press. Running the job on the punch press also allowed RMIG to ensure high quality and material utilisation to a tight delivery and budget.

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Manufactured from 1.0millimetre thick pre-galvanised steel, each individual PCB housing plate measures 465mm x 265mm and contains more than 1500 individual perforations for ventilation and weight saving together with around 300 special semi-perforated circuit board location notches.
In production, the components were produced by RMIG from 1500mm by 2500mm sheet blanks, enabling 25 individual items to be produced from every sheet, using the Amadas integral sheet save feature, which ensured high material utilisation with minimum wastage. Due to the complexity, volume of perforations and the positional accuracy required for each hole of just 0.1mm, 19 different tools were required to perforate the components to the pattern and specification demanded by the customer. By using the flexible Amada machine, the components were capable of being finish machined in a single pass giving a production rate of 1000 per week.

Andrew Wadbrook-McLay, Production Manager with RMIG UK, explained: This was a challenging component to produce, but is fairly typical of the increasingly tight tolerance, advanced manufacturing contracts that we undertake, as customers appreciate the detailed skills, expertise and manufacturing knowledge we apply to their products to deliver a cost effective, high quality solution.


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