Page 26 - MetalForming September 2013

Conveying Solution
dramatic improvement in weld fitup. That made downstream assembly oper- ations much more efficient. So, early in 2011 I began to investigate acquiring our own laser-cutting machine.”
A year later Virnig made the leap, investing $1 million in his automated Bystar setup. “The benefit of cleaner cut parts, improved accuracy, less—or no—post-cut edge cleanup, improved fitup and a cleaner shop—no fumes,
like you get with plasma—has made the investment easy to justify,” Virnig says.
Conveyor Brings Material-Handling Efficiency
Taking his automated laser-cutting cell to the highest level of throughput and productivity, Virnig specified the setup with the conveying system underneath the machine—below
grade. “When we started shopping for a laser-cutting machine, we saw one that featured a conveyor under the cutting table, and we really liked the concept,” says Virnig. “But the machine we saw did not fit as well in our build- ing layout as did the Bystar’s footprint. Our fab shop is long and skinny, 70 by 200 ft.”
Virnig combined the best of both worlds by customizing the Bystar and adding a shaker conveyor underneath, digging out a pit to make room. The conveyor captures all of the parts, scrap and slag that fall through the table, he says. It moves everything to an elevat- ing conveyor that carries the material up and out of the pit and deposits it into a bin. The operator periodically goes to the bin to pull out the parts, while the machine’s automation setup picks up the remaining skeletons from the cutting table and any remaining parts.
The underground conveyor is a shuffle-drive unit from Mayfran Inter- national. It completely covers the underside of the cutting machine. “The Bystar comes standard with trays that capture cut parts, and operators would have had to periodically remove the parts from the trays,” says Virnig. “Using the Mayfran conveyor to cap- ture the parts and move them to the bin avoids this labor-intensive step.”
Lights-Out Lasering
The conveyor also helps support lights-out cutting on the Bystar.
“At the end of the night shift each Monday to Thursday evening, the oper- ator will load material onto the storage tower and we’ll run the machine unat- tended from 1:00 to 5:00 a.m.,” says Virnig, “four days per week. Knowing that the conveyor’s design prevents any material from getting into its working mechanisms helps give us the confi- dence that there won’t be any prob- lems. And, we make sure we schedule sheet nests for lights-out operation that won’t give us problems with part tip-up. We can’t run everything lights- out.”
Each nested sheet typically takes
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24 MetalForming/September 2013
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