Page 16 - MetalForming June 2019

PTM Corp.’s
‘New Baby’
...is a 1000-ton giant-bed mechanical press that has the prototype and production metal forming company convinced that bigger is better. New and existing customers have begun knocking on the door for larger and higher-value production parts, as well as value-added work.
BY BRAD F. KUVIN, PUBLISHER/EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
The excitement is infectious. When you spend time talking with Donna Russell-Kuhr, CEO of prototype and production metal former PTM Corp., Fair Haven, MI, about her new “baby,” you can’t help but become caught up in her enthu- siasm. What’s got Russell-Kuhr so pumped?
“I never thought we’d have a 1000-ton mechanical stamping press at PTM,” she says, thinking back to the 1970s when the company launched under her father’s direction, and even to when
she took the reins of the family business a few years ago. But what Russell-Kuhr knows now, and what the rest of the metal forming community will
know when PTM holds an
open house this month, is
that the company indeed
owns and operates a 1000-
ton mechanical press—and Rus- sell-Kuhr couldn’t be prouder of her ‘new baby.’
The move to 1000-ton press capacity represents quite a jump from the firm’s previous mechan- ical-press capacity of 600 tons, and promises to open all sorts of new doors for the company, explains Russell-Kuhr, in terms of part size, workpiece material type and thickness, production quanti- ties, and margins. “That’s because our newly expanded capacity to ful- fill high-volume production runs of
“We’ve done nearly every part on a vehicle,” says Donna Russell-Kuhr, CEO of PTM Corp. “And we do work in the white goods industry as well—stove tops and
washing-machine parts for example. Most recently, we’ve become experts at floor pans, rails (left) and other complex assemblies.”
14 MetalForming/June 2019
www.metalformingmagazine.com