Friday, July 24, 2009
ESAB launches CNC plasma-arc cutting power source
The three-phase 440A 50Hz machine, with IP 22 protection, operates from a 400V supply.
The power source also produces high-quality cuts, has low running costs and is ideal for production line applications, steel producers and sub-contract profilers.
High-speed cutting can be achieved on conductive materials including mild steel from 0.5 to 80mm, stainless steel from 1mm up to 100mm including up to 70mm dross-free, and aluminium.
Quality cutting can be achieved with all thicknesses and piercing of material up to 50mm thickness can also be carried out.
Plasma gases include air, oxygen, nitrogen/hydrogen, argon/hydrogen with argon as a marking gas.
Cutting and marking operations can be carried out with the same consumables.
The power source can be used in conjunction with the full range of ESAB CNC plasma-arc cutting tables.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Friedman Industries
Friedman Industries located its steel coil processing plant adjacent to a steel mill to increase productivity and lower operating costs. |
Friedman Industries Inc. recently opened a new steel coil processing plant located in Decatur, Ala. The facility converts hotrolled coils received from the adjacent Nucor Steel Co. mill into hotrolled sheet and plate relieved of distortions commonly associated with coiled steel through the use of temper-passing and leveling equipment.
Temperpassing and leveling result in significantly flatter and more consistent steels, with the improvements becoming even more pronounced in higher-strength alloys. The cost- and timesaving benefits of Friedman temper-passing and leveling capabilities have become increasingly important where higherstrength materials and tighter tolerances are best handled using today’s more precise, more expensive plasma and laser cutting CNC equipment.
http://www.americanmachinist.com/304/Issue/Article/False/84594/Issue
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Massive oxy-acetylene gantry profiler doubles throughput for large parts
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