Massive oxy-acetylene gantry profiler doubles throughput for large parts

Spain's Oxyser has dramatically increased the throughput of its oxy-acetylene steel cutting machinery, and automated the process, by developing a new twin-head machine controlled by NUM's Axium CNC platform. In total, the CNC controls 16 motor axes to manage the motion of a gantry with two positioning heads - each fitted with mobile oxy-acetylene cutting torches.

The machine has just been commissioned at Grupo Ros Casares' plant in Aviles, Spain – the company is the Spanish leader in industrial distribution and logistics, steel service centres and structural steelwork.

The new machine is used initially to produce steel plate sections required to construct wind turbine generator towers. The shaped plates are generally cut with bevelled edges so that they can be welded together easily on site.

The parallel worktables - one for each tool head - are 26 metres long, and eight metres wide. The gantry supports two cutting tool heads, with one slave tool following the motion of the master tool. The 4.2 cm thick steel plates being cut for the current wind turbine application typically weigh around eight tonnes each, measure around 10 x 2 metres, and have bevelled edges. To meet the end user's production requirements, the machine currently operates for 16 hours a day. During this period it cuts up to 32 steel plates. The high degree of automation of the cutting process supported by Oxyser's machine means that just one operator is needed, both to run the machine and remove offcuts. The new machine more than doubles throughput.

Believed to be the first of its kind, the machine introduces automatic programmed control of shape cutting in an application sector that is use to much simpler machines: traditionally, only three CNC-controlled axes are employed and the initial positioning of the oxy-acetylene tool for linear cuts is performed manually.

Oxyser developed the new-generation cutting machine to improve productivity for Grupo Ros Casares, and although the cutting capability of the machine's oxy-acetylene torch heads were conceived with the versatility needed to produce bevelled edges for the cladding of wind turbine structures, the machine will cut virtually any complex shape defined by a CAD program.

A specialisist in producing plasma and oxy cutting machines, up to now Oxyser has typically produced smaller systems with up to five axes of control. This project marks the company's entry into the high-end cutting market.

The key technical requirement to meet the demands of this application was a much more powerful CNC. NUM provided a solution in the form of its Axium platform, which offered the computational power to control the 16 axes of motion required. NUM was also able to provide all of the ancillary automation components required for the application including drives, motors, I/O and HMI panel.


http://www.machinery.co.uk/article/19149/Massive-oxy-acetylene-gantry-profiler-doubles-throughput-for-large-parts.aspx