Helping Hancock Enterprises Improve Safety, Throughput, and Uptime with Stamtec Presses

Hancock’s older presses primarily used dry clutch and brake systems, which experienced more wear under frequent single-stroke operation. The customer also needed to improve operator safety around hand-transferred parts, where older palm-button locations were positioned too close to the tooling and created avoidable hazards.

Hancock began using Stamtec presses several years ago and quickly saw them as a strong value for a high-quality press. Visionary helped the customer continue replacing older assets with newer Stamtec presses featuring wet clutch and brake technology, OmniLink controls, improved guarding options, safer palm-button placement, and light curtains where needed.

The newer press systems helped improve operator comfort and OSHA-aligned safety by moving palm buttons farther away from tooling and adding light curtains in some applications. The wet clutch and brake design, combined with OmniLink controls, also helped the presses start and stop faster, supporting safer hand-transfer operation while increasing production throughput by approximately 15%.

Hancock was also an important milestone for Visionary because it became one of the first series of press startups completed directly by the VMS team. By building this startup expertise in-house, Visionary helped save customer travel costs, provided closer local support, and became more valuable as a service partner for Hancock and other Michigan-area customers.

Hancock continues to purchase multiple presses as older assets are replaced, and Visionary now supports the customer with preventive maintenance planning focused on eliminating downtime. Their downtime has fallen to single digits for the year, reinforcing the value of upgraded equipment, local service knowledge, and an ongoing supplier-customer relationship.