Shimless Tooling Sets

Conventional tooling is usually manufactured to fractional (1/32" 1/16", 1/8", 1/4", etc) or decimal (.031", .047", .062", .093", .109", .125" etc) increments, and machined to ANSI standard (±.0002") thickness tolerances. Using conventional tooling requires the use of plastic shims, which have the tendency to pick up dirt or fold over. The combination of the thickness tolerance of the knives and spacers in conjunction with the usage of plastic shims, often caused problems in maintaining proper clearances, achieving tighter strip width tolerances, and avoiding cumulative tolerance errors. This resulted in shorter tool life and the need for re-sets.

Shimless tooling, having a thickness tolerance of ± 40 millionths of an inch (±0.001 mm) and manufactured to .001" increments allows complete flexibility, mathematically, in grouping tooling without using plastic or steel shims. Typical shimless spacer complements use spacer sizes, such as .1005, .100, .101, .102, .103, 106, .110, etc., or .0505, .050, .051, .054, .058, etc. Standard tooling packages are designed to achieve strip width increments of .001" and clearance increments of .0005". However, there are also systems, which utilize clearance increments of .0001" and strip width increments of .00005". Shimless tooling is always supplied with a WINDOWS™ software program, which solves the problem of calculating shimless setups.

The major benefits of shimless tooling are:

• Exact and even clearances
• Elimination of cumulative tolerance errors
• Less chance of setup errors (re-sets)
• Minimum/reduced knife edge stress as a result of a balanced setup
• Same slitting results from operator to operator (important for a multiple shift operation).
• Computer tells the operator which steel spacers and knives to use, for any given setup, to obtain the correct strip widths
• Achieving tighter slit width tolerances
• Virtually burr free strips
• CamB_5 advanced software that offers various input and output options

For more information on Shimless Tooling contact:

Uli Kremer: ukremer@dienesusa.com