Amerimax Home Products

The Challenge

Amerimax Home Products is a leading manufacturer of metal rain-carrying systems, accessories, and exterior products for the home. Manufacturing these products involves sheet-metal forming, including a lot of roll forming and stamping. The company’s toolmakers needed a CAD system to design dies that can produce 100,000 units of a product at a given time.

The Solution

Using SolidWorks is like working on a tool bench. I can visualize everything just exactly the way it’s going to work and how the part is going to form. I can turn the die, look down through it, and make sure the punches are lining up with the die parts. SolidWorks reduces design steps. I can easily visualize things that can go wrong and fix them right there in minutes, rather than waiting till we are on the bench. Drawings automatically update. When the time comes to put purchased parts into the die, I go to the design tables where I store them, look for the size I need, and pop them in. Once the die is built, 90 percent of the time it can run straight to production without weeks of tweaking. One of the biggest benefits of SolidWorks is the company’s openness to users’ requests. I have asked for several things that have been included in the software and made my life easier.