Posts Tagged ‘Laser Cutting’

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Critical laser cutting, welding tested in Japanese crisis

March 15th, 2011
By: Tim Heston

When news broke of the earthquake-damaged nuclear plant in Japan, my mind turned to Jim Bleigh at Performance Contracting Inc., a Lenexa, Kan., company The FABRICATOR covered earlier this year. His group of talented welders, laser cutting machine operators, and assemblers fabricated strainers designed for use in Japan’s nuclear power plants.

When researching the story, I learned that these strainers help prevent what I thought at the time was an extraordinarily unlikely scenario: a nuclear meltdown. Fully assembled, the strainers help filter debris so that the pumps never become clogged and the flow of water back to the reactor is never blocked.

The strainer was designed with 1-in.-thick stainless steel sections, literally thousands of them. Why 1 in. thick? As Bleigh told me, it was to meet the Japanese nuclear industry’s unique seismic requirements. The 1-in.-thick stainless steel components cut on the company’s 7-kW laser were built to withstand unthinkable disasters.

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Fabricators doing what matters

February 8th, 2011
By: Tim Heston

I smile when I read articles like this.

Kapco Inc., a Wisconsin metal fabricator and stamper, didn’t get noticed nationally because it expanded its metal fabrication capability during the past decade; because it continued to grow throughout the worst of the recession; or because the firm operates debt-free.

But it did get national attention--on NBC’s “Dateline”--when the company’s charity, Hometown Heroes, Family Edition, reached out to the community in a big way. According to the Biz Times, a Milwaukee-area business newspaper, the charity “helped coordinate more than 1,000 volunteers that renovated and expanded the home of a Grafton [Wis.] family. The family is headed by a single mother of three who was diagnosed with breast cancer; two of her children have cerebral palsy.”

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FABTECH 2010 impressions

November 10th, 2010
By: Vicki Bell

If you missed last week's FABTECH in Atlanta, you missed a lot — many new product introductions; outstanding educational offerings; an opportunity like no other to network with fellow fabricating and forming professionals; having your photo taken for the cover of an industry publication; Sonny's barbeque and Chick-fil-A (unless you're lucky enough to have them where you live); southern hospitality; a piece of The FABRICATOR®'s 40th anniversary cake; and so much more. 

FABTECH 2010 was a huge, happening event. I found myself at the start of the show thinking: So little time and so much to see. And despite my aching feet, I didn't see half of it. But what I saw was impressive, and I want to share some of my observations from the first half of the first day to give you a glimpse of what you missed. (more...)

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The power of predictability

October 25th, 2010
By: Tim Heston

Several years ago Doug Gardner, president of Johnson City, N.Y.-based Hi-Tech Industries of New York, landed what’s increasingly rare today for fabricators: a multiyear contract. The shop’s Amada Pulsar 2-kW laser ran 24 hours a day and just couldn’t keep up, Gardner said, adding that the machine took 90 hours to process 2,000 pieces.

Gardner then got a new laser, the Amada LC-3015 F1 NT, a 4-kW system that could cut those 2,000 pieces in 21 hours. Later the shop installed a robotized press brake, an Amada Astro 100NT system that changes out specialized press brake tools quickly. The machine tool fits very well with another large contract from a customer who produces four units a week, and Hi-Tech Industries churns out 150 different components for each unit.

He pointed to one extremely complex component: a toaster-size stainless steel filter requiring 13 bends. The robotized press brake needs about 15 minutes to set up for this.

After talking with Gardner last week, I heard that earnestness and excitement so common among small-business owners. You can tell this guy loves machines and he loves his business. But under his enthusiasm is a pragmatic businessman. He didn’t buy machine tools just to get fast processing times. Fast cutting alone won’t make a business more profitable. If a shop owner buys a fancy new laser, and it just floods the floor with work-in-process and shoves insurmountable bottlenecks downstream, the company probably isn’t getting as much as it could out of a sizable investment.

His reasons for the technology investment could be boiled down to three areas, each directly related to the other: manufacturing predictability, flexibility, and inventory reduction.

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The laser is 50, and still beaming

May 17th, 2010
By: Tim Heston

On May 16, 1960, Theodore Maiman of Hughes Labs became the first person on the planet to build light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation—or laser. (Thank goodness the acronym stuck.) On Sunday, the laser turned 50.

I’m willing to bet that on that day in 1960, Ignacio “Nacho” Palomarez had no idea how the laser would change his life. Seven years after the laser’s invention, Palomarez’ father launched Spacesonic, a sheet metal fabrication shop in San Carlos, Calif., between San Jose and San Francisco. As Palomarez told me during an interview last year, “For $5,000, my father bought a used press brake without a backgauge, a kick press with just a handful of punches, and a shear that couldn’t cut soft butter within a sixteenth of an inch.”

When the first laser, a 1-kW Amada machine, hit Spacesonic’s floor in the 1980s, life for workers changed dramatically. Consider a 0.063-inch sheet that required precise, 15-degree bends so that the four corners would come together and match up to look like a Cartier diamond. Before the laser, operators had to cut stacked groups of these blanks with a vertical band saw. “It took hours, with workers patiently cutting on the right side of the scribed line,” Palomarez said, “desperately wanting to put more pressure on it, but knowing dang well the saw blade would deviate or break. The whole time you’re just standing there, wishing something would just cut this for you. The laser did that.”

That story pretty much sums up why lasers are so ubiquitous today in metal fabrication. They could run circles around legacy technology.

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Investor and consumer versus the citizen

February 23rd, 2010
By: Tim Heston

Dennis Rider’s career path changed directions recently, as reported by The Grand Rapids Press. After 27 years as a roll forming and laser cutting machine operator, he was let go in 2007. After spending serious time job hunting, Rider decided to retrain as an auto mechanic. He told the newspaper that he likes his job a lot; he was a serious car tinkerer in his youth, after all. He does miss the money, though. Today he makes about half what he made at his former position, factoring in all the night-shift and overtime work he had operating metal fabricating machinery.

You read right: He now makes half of what he used to make, and he put himself through two years of school to get that smaller paycheck. Note that this isn’t your stereotypical, relatively unskilled assembly person. This person was trained in metal fabrication technology.

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'Coming back slowly'

December 2nd, 2009
By: Vicki Bell

With all the buzz about Tiger Woods, you may not have seen the flurry of reports post FABTECH, such as this one that appeared in today's Rockford Register Star newspaper, that offer glimpses of where metal fabricating companies stand in the recessionary cycle.

According to the article, Farley LaserLab Vice President and General Manager John Johnson and his staff left the 2009 FABTECH International & AWS Welding show including METALFORM "with a bit of bounce in their steps, thanks to the optimism felt from potential manufacturing customers planning for 2010."

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Itching for economic recovery

July 27th, 2009
By: Tim Heston

Rodie Woodard just finished a good week.

When I talked with the president of Irving, Texas-based Maximum Industries Thursday, he told me he just closed a deal that will keep his contract fabrication shop humming 24 hours a day for several months. His customer in the signage industry is putting together a large advertising project for a cellular phone company.

He said that it seems companies are trying to catch what's likely to be a very gradual upswing in the economy. Although optimistic, the shop owner doesn't have immediate plans to hire additional employees.

This encapsulates where I feel the economy stands, judging by the people I've talked to and reports I've read: People are itching for an economic rebound, but they're not willing to bet the farm on one.

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The hunt for opportunity at ALAW

May 22nd, 2009
By: Tim Heston

Before one session at last week's ALAW Laser Applications Workshop, a fabricator stood in the back of the conference room at the Inn at St. John"s in Plymouth, Mich., just outside Detroit. He peered at the small sound board that controlled the microphone at the podium and noted the metal brackets and enclosures, as well as the nameplate.

"I"ll have to give them a call," he said.

This underscores the decidedly different tone at this year's event, co-sponsored by the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association (FMA), International, and the Laser Institute of America. Launched as the Automotive Laser Applications Workshop 17 years ago, the conference has since broadened its scope to include contract manufacturing and other industrial sectors. Like in previous years, the conference offered two tracks, one focusing on the automotive industry and another on general metal fabrication.

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Do more with less and perplexity

March 2nd, 2009
By: Tim Heston

Recently I heard an apt story for our times, one that delved into the history behind that perennial, and often abhorred, business buzz phrase, "Do more with less."

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