Tube, Pipe and Roll Forming Blog

MENTOR, OH – January 2012

Roll-Kraft’s Vice President of Tube Mill Engineering, Robert A. Sladky, will be presenting, “Tube and Pipe Mill Set Up” on Wednesday, March 21st from 10:15AM—12:15PM at Fabtech’s first conference in Canada – Fabtech Canada 2012. The conference will be held March 20-22, 2012 at the Toronto Congress Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

This presentation is tailored to address and strengthen the “weak links” in the mill operations in regard to proper tube and pipe mill set up.  Problems and solutions will be outlined throughout the presentation in the major sections of forming, welding and sizing sections.

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MENTOR, OH – December 2011

Roll-Kraft, a leading producer of tooling for the tube & pipe and roll forming industries conducts numerous tube and pipe training seminars and roll forming training seminars throughout the country. Recently, it has seen a new trend emerge as companies look to decrease training costs and improve efficiencies.

According to Robert Sladky, Vice President of Tube Mill Engineering, and Bret Molnar, Senior Technical Advisor for Roll-Kraft, “We are seeing a new trend in conducting seminars. More firms with multiple plants are consolidating their training programs and combining the attendees from multiple plants for their in-house seminars.”

This not only expedites the training of entire teams of personnel, but saves the costs involved in having individual seminars for each plant. It is by far the most efficient plan for these companies.

Such was the case recently for two of Roll-Kraft’s major tube & pipe customers in the East, and in the South. Each customer has multiple plants running smaller mechanical tube mills, as well as larger pipe mills. Management from each location got together and scheduled back-to-back weeks of programs at key locations, which allowed them to split up the attendees from their various plants and still keep production running on their mills.

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Summary:

The Roll-Kraft presentation at this year’s Fabtech Technical Conference, entitled, “Tube and Pipe Mill Setup, Tooling Design Evaluation, and Problems and Solutions” drew more than double the attendance of previous years.

MENTOR, OH -  November, 2011

Roll-Kraft’s Robert A. Sladky, Vice President of Tube Mill Engineering and Bret Molnar, Senior Technical Advisor presented, “Tube and Pipe Mill Setup, Tooling Design Evaluation, and Problems and Solutions,” at Fabtech’s Technical Conferences recently held in Chicago. 

This year’s attendance was more than double the previous years of the conferences.  The Technical Conferences are held in conjunction with the annual Fabtech Trade Shows and offer concise, focused learning opportunities for attendees.

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Requested by 75% of Roll-Kraft’s Nebraska customer base, Roll-Kraft organized and conducted a regional seminar on October 27th in Waverly, Nebraska.

In addition to customers from Nebraska, many others from surrounding states also attended the program.

The program was presented Robert A. Sladky, Vice President of Tube Mill Engineering.

Below is a sampling of some of the comments from the course attendees:

• Five months into my job here, it was a great amount of pertinent data. I also think it’s a great refresher training for more experienced operators.
• It gave me a better understanding of operation and maintenance.
• Very thorough and informative. Would be beneficial for all mill employees, not just operators.
• I realized the importance of standards for setup and operation. Maintaining tooling is vital.
• Being new to welding, this technical information has jump-started my education in this field and gave me several ideas of projects to implement to improve this department. I now have a better understanding of this information and am confident in the reasoning behind the science.

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MENTOR, OH – October, 2011

Roll-Kraft has recently upgraded its tube and pipe design and roll forming design software used in engineering custom-made tube and pipe tooling and roll forming tooling. This upgrade will now allow the software to design the bearingless floating flange within the program. The improvement will immediately reduce engineering time by close to 50%. The program will draw up each piece of the bearingless floating flange and produce an assembly drawing. The result will be shorter manufacturing times for the programmers and standardization of the various processes.

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MENTOR, OH – October, 2011

Roll-Kraft, a leading producer of tube and pipe tooling and roll forming tooling, is pleased to announce the addition of Juergen Hack to the staff at Roll-Kraft Ltd. in Ontario, Canada as an Account Manager. Mr. Hack comes to Roll-Kraft from ECO Solutions FT, Inc. His experience there was as Technical Business Development Manager, opening up markets across Canada and in the U.S. through direct sales and agent and distribution networks.

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MENTOR, OH – October, 2011

Roll-Kraft is pleased to announce that Patrick J. Hopkins has been selected to be a part of the Young Professional Council. This is a group sponsored by the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association (FMA). Their mission is to identify, create, and establish mentoring and networking opportunities to reach potential entrepreneurs, business owners, and those interested in a manufacturing career.

The group provides speakers for manufacturing conferences, local schools, and various other opportunities, to enumerate the advantages and benefits of being involved in the manufacturing community. Often, the group works directly with school guidance counselors to answer questions and challenge America’s youth to investigate the field of manufacturing. Their effort is to dispel the old stereotypes of dirty and dangerous factory workplaces, and expose them to the updated, modern factory floor, with automated systems, and clean working conditions. There are many advantages in pursuing a career in manufacturing these days.

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