Page 36 - MetalForming April 2014

Laser Cutter
isThree Machines in One
...thanks in part to a rotary index station located on one of three shuttle pallets, allowing Jay Manufacturing to bring inhouse previously outsourced tube and structural work. Laser cutting replaces sawing, drilling and machining, allowing Jay to improve quality and reduce costs.
BY BRAD F. KUVIN, EDITOR
Jay Manufacturing fabricates and assembles a variety of sheet, plate and struc- tural parts from carbon and stainless steels and aluminum alloys, for the ag, defense, heavy trucking, material-handling and mining industries, among others.
Three plant expansions since 2005, the latest a 53,000-sq.-ft. addi- tion built in 2012, speaks vol- umes to the success Jay Manufacturing has had—and expects to continue hav- ing—in growing with its customers.
“We’re fortunate to have a lot of for- ward-looking customers looking to expand,” says company president Matt Jameson, “and they’ve relied on us to help them grow.”
A third-generation family-owned metal fabricator with approximately 120,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing floor space in Oshkosh, WI, Jay Mfg. focuses much of its work in the agricultural, defense, heavy trucking, material-han- dling and mining industries. Of its 100 employees, 20 are AWS-certified welders. This substantial welding capacity, along with four Panasonic robotic arc-weld- ing cells, illustrates a strategic move begun several years ago, and which has become a primary catalyst for growth. Weldments can be huge—the robotic cells can process 8-ft. weld- ments and are equipped with Bluco modular fixturing tables. Manual weld booths also feature these same fixture
tables, which can be extended to 40 ft. when needed. Jay employs three certi- fied-welding inspectors and houses a state-of-the-art weld-testing lab.
Upstream Operations Feed Downstream Welding
has proved to be the perfect partner to feed heavier-gauge parts to Jay’s weld- ing operations.
All of this added capacity has allowed Jay Mfg. to grow with its cus- tomers, “who have believed in us for a long time,” says company vice presi- dent Tony Robinson. “We doubled our
With so much inhouse capacity, feeding its hungry and productive welding oper- ations has led Jay to invest in new upstream fabricating equipment.
“We purchased our first laser-cutting machine (a 4-kW Amada Gemini 3015) in 2005,” says Jameson, noting that before that time the shop focused on turret-punch operations. A second 4-kW Gemini 3015 landed in 2007, and in 2009 Jay became the first fabricator in Wisconsin to install an Amada LC4020 6000-W laser-cutting machine, with an 80- by 160-in. table and automatic nozzle chang- er. It’s capable of cutting material to 1.25-in. thick, and
welding
34 MetalForming/April 2014
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Jay’s robotic arc-welding cells have become a primary catalyst for growth. Weldments can be huge, and with so much inhouse welding capacity Jay has invested in new upstream fabricating equipment to keep the work flowing.