Page 20 - MetalForming December 2014
P. 20
What Good is a Good Stamping
When You Need it Fast
TM TM
In-Stock Items Ship in 24-48 Hours
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(513) 242-8900
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Advanta’s team of 23 skilled welders assemble laser-cut sheet, plate and tubular-steel products to fabricate returnable racks and other dunnage products, such as the racks shown here used to ship stamped automotive parts.
Unattended, Lights Out
Advanta runs both Amada machines unmanned for two shifts, and lights-out during a third shift. Longer-running jobs (often thicker plate) typically run lights-out. Each material- storage tower comprises nine shelves rated to 6600 lb. of material. The automated mate- rial-handling systems deliver nested blanks from the towers to the lasers, and return cut blanks back to the storage tow- ers to be manually shaken apart later.
To make better racks, Advanta works hard at designing and building better weld fixtures, fabri- cated from laser-cut plate. Witness this fixture, with angled cutouts to simplify weld fitup. “The new lasers have really changed the way we assem- ble,” says Obermyer. “We’re now making fixtures in just a few hours that used to take us days to fabri- cate. That’s opened up a lot of capacity in our shop and reduced fixture costs, in some cases, by as much as 75 percent.”
18 MetalForming/December 2014
www.metalformingmagazine.com
Advanta fabricates primarily mild-steel sheet and plate, as
well as square tube, from 16 gauge to 1 in. thick; the sweet
spot is 3⁄16 in. material, which
runs on either the CO2 or fiber-laser machine. Thinner work routes to the fiber, which cuts with shop air up to 14 gauge and oxygen on thicker work; for the occasional galvanized-steel job, nitrogen gets the call. Work 3⁄16 in. and thicker routes to the CO2 machine, using oxygen as the assist gas.
For example, he describes a recent job cutting trailer-hitch side plates from thick steel, originally specified as 3⁄8 in. but that ultimately wound up being cut from 0.390 in. work (or 0.015 in. thinner).
“You wouldn’t think that the 0.015 in. would make a difference in the laser-cutting process,” he says, “but it definitely did. While we were able to cut the slightly thinner material a little faster, when we increased gas pressure the cut edge started to get choppy. So we actually reduced gas pressure a bit and increased the pulse rate of the laser, which made for a beautifully smooth cut edge.” MF
“Cutting 14-gauge steel using shop air on the fiber laser is amazingly fast,” says Obermyer, “up to 750 in./min. That’s four times faster than with the CO2 machine.”
Obermyer has learned a lot in a short time when it comes to optimizing laser-cutting parameters to achieve certain quality and productivity goals.
