Can Industry Tooling
Sedwall Manufacturing Company in St. Charles, Illinois continues to focus on providing wide ranging services to can makers. Since we moved into our new 34,000 sq. ft. facility in 1997 we have expanded our capacities in surface and cylindrical grinding, CNC jig grinding, wire EDM and vertical machining. These increased capacities have opened up doors for us in providing tooling for can manufacturers in areas such as easy open end, rectangular and embossing tooling. This has permitted us to become a one stop shop for many producers in the container industry.
Although we are known best for our unsurpassed capacity and innovation in beader and curler tooling, our full service shop also provides complete double dies, spare tooling, emergency services, wire EDM capacity and much more to our customers. Our truly diverse capabilities stand ready to fulfill any tool making need. Customers return to Sedwall knowing that we exceed expectations on precision conversion tooling, aerosol tooling, curler tooling, beader tooling and much more.
Large Diameter Precision Turning of Contours and Forms
Sedwall’s new CNC vertical turret lathe can swing 78.74” diameter and holds 10 tons of material. We can precisely turn large forgings, weldments, billets, gear blanks, and rings in the hard or soft condition.
Large Diameter Precision Grinding
Sedwall manufactures tooling for many industries that utilize our large capacity grinders. Crush grinding techniques are used to grind tooling that rims all the coins at the U.S. mints in Denver and Philadelphia. Sedwall has been selected as a preferred provider of this tooling based on our expertise. We also are a preferred provider of tooling to Weber Stephen for the manufacture of their kettle grills. Sedwall can grind tool steel rings up to 5 feet in diameter to exacting tolerances and forms. Increased performance and tool life occurs when our accurately ground rings are compared to others.
Beader Tooling
Nobody makes beader tooling like Sedwall. We produce tooling for American and European equipment for most can manufacturers. We use crush grinding technology that assures repeatability from tool to tool even if they are bought years apart. Our grinding wheels cut cooler and more aggressively than a dressed wheel and allow us to use more horsepower without damaging the material structure. Geometrically, tooling produced by Sedwall is more square, more flat and more ready to perform to your expectations. We remain current on tool coatings to provide our customers with options that can optimize performance.
Curler Tooling
Sedwall has the best methods and machinery available to produce quality curler tooling. We have tooled up three large vertical spindle grinders to manufacture curler and beader tooling. We have 7-1/2 horsepower spindles that can efficiently remove stock. These spindles drive 14 inch (355 mm) diameter grinding wheels in which we crush the proper groove configuration. We set up the rings or segments for you just as they will sit in your curler. Because of this combination of strength, horsepower, and rigidity, forms are able to be ground from a solid configuration. This guarantees a precise profile in the parts we supply to you and a reliable, repeatable groove in your tooling. Our prices remain competitive because we can grind at such impressive rates without facing the problem of introducing excessive heat into the material. Every curl ring and segment set is inspected during the manufacturing process and a final time on our Coordinate Measuring Machine prior to shipment. Additionally, we make a metal pour of each and every groove and store those pours in a library to have a record of what we produced. This is done for both new and reworked curler tooling.
Pail and Drum Tooling
Sedwall provides tooling for 55 gallon drums all the way down to 5 gallon pails as well as for decorative cans for the popcorn and gift industry. Some of the tooling we have provided for manufacturers of drums are:
- Complete blanking and forming dies for lids or ends
- Chucking rings
- Seaming rolls and rings
- Flanging and curling rings
- Welder Z-bars
- Carando tooling
- Reconditioning of existing dies
All tooling is 100% ground with guaranteed concentricity for long life and wear and optimum performance.
CNC Jig Grinding
We have an active department with (3) Moore CNC Jig Grinders. Our lead man for this department has over 20 years experience and repeat business is becoming the norm for this department as the quality of our work is earning a commendable reputation. We are handling select embossing tooling, tab tooling, rectangular tooling and many other items that suit this application quite well. Some recent tooling we have manufactured in the area of full panel easy open aluminum ends are punch and slit wipedowns (new and reworks), upper and lower caps and lance dies.
Precision Machining Capabilities
- CNC/conventional jig grinding
- CNC milling and turning
- CNC vertical turning
- Precision ID/OD grinding
- Large diameter precision grinding (60 in.)
- Intricate contour and form grinding
- Carbide tooling
- Wire EDM
Back Engineering
Sedwall provides valuable engineering services for our customers. We integrate our coordinate measuring machine, Autodesk Inventor solid modeling, and Edgecam programming capabilities to produce engineering virtually identical to provided sample tooling. We can always incorporate defined changes per our customers’ requirements. This has proven especially valuable to our customers who purchase previously used turnkey systems that do not have accompanying blueprints.