We have a lot of customers who come to us with prototype parts. Many aren t even sure if the drawing they have is their final design. Just the other day, he recalls, the folks from Just Born Candies, the people who make Peeps, came to us needing some little pumpkin-face dies. They were getting ready for the Halloween season and were shifting over from bunnies and chickens to marshmallow pumpkins. Really, there s no end to the variety, Charnegie explains.
Any machine shop can make one of anything.
LMS makes parts for a huge variety of local and national companies, particularly in the aftermarket automotive and architectural hardware industries. In addition to short-run stamping of stainless, brass, and aluminum parts, LMS does a considerable amount of die setup work. We use a lot of sensor technology here with fully automated dies, he points out. We monitor cutoff, stroke, part ejection, and take photographs of the die s movement. If something s not in position before the die comes all the way down, the process will stop, protecting valuable tooling.