Based in Drumfries, County Donegal, the Irish sub-contractor Inishowen Engineering specialises in sheet metal fabrication and CNC machining. The company has seen a 20% increase in its laser cutting speed when processing mild-steel sheet up to 4mm thick since replacing its Bystronic 6kW CO2 laser profiler with a similarly powered fibre laser machine from the same supplier in mid-2015.

Michael McKinney, Inishowen Engineering’s managing director, said: “We have a policy of regularly replacing our production machines, so when our 2007 CO2 laser machine came up for renewal last year, fibre technology was the obvious choice. It not only cuts thinner material significantly faster but also costs less to run and service, so we will enjoy financial savings for years to come.

“The latest high-power fibre sources also allow heavier-gauge materials to be processed nearly as efficiently as on a CO2 machine. Indeed, we regularly cut mild steel up to 12mm thick on the Bystronic BySprint Fiber 4020. On even thicker materials, up to 25mm, we use the BySprint CO2 machine and a plasma cutter, so we have all requirements covered.”

Inishowen Engineering specialises in supplying complete assemblies. In addition to the profiling division, the firm runs a welding department and a precision-machining facility that houses large machining centres and lathes. Mr McKinney says that only 30% of the profiling division’s output is delivered either untouched or after a visit to a Bystronic press brake. The remainder undergoes fabrication, and often the inclusion of machined components.

The company’s customers are to be found across the construction industry, for which it supplies structural steelwork, staircases, railings, excavator attachments and much else. Marine equipment includes stainless-steel conveyors and sorting tables, while crushers for the quarrying industry are an important product line. The agriculture sector continues to be a mainstay.

Farm equipment

Indeed, it was to service farming equipment that Mr McKinney started the company in 1994. He bought his first plasma cutting machine five years later and began supplying parts to agricultural-equipment manufacturers. Business grew steadily, as did the expectations of Inishowen Engineering’s customers, which now included fork-lift truck manufacturers that were demanding ever-more-accurate components to minimise the need for fit-up during assembly.

This was the trigger for the company installing its first laser profiler, a BySprint 4020 CO2 model with a 4 x 2m sheet capacity and ByTrans automated sheet loading and unloading. Its purchase in 2007 followed a six-month appraisal of alternative laser cutters on the market, culminating in a visit to Bystronic’s factory in Switzerland and cost-per-part production trials at the machine builder’s Coventry subsidiary (www.bystronic.com).

Laser cutting represented a marked step forward, not only in component accuracy but also in edge quality, resulting in favourable feedback from the sub-contractor’s customers — but then the recession took hold, and demand halved. Mr McKinney had a simple and effective solution; he doubled the size of his customer base and instigated lean manufacturing procedures; by 2011, his turnover had returned to pre-recession levels.

Press brake work

Come 2008, Inishowen Engineering was being asked to supply more and more folded parts; this resulted in the company buying a 3m 150-tonne Bystronic Xpert press brake. The company has since standardised on this supplier for all its bending requirements, and two 4m 400-tonne Xpert press brakes were installed in tandem two years later, allowing the company to fold components up to twice as long as the previous 4m maximum, greatly increasing its supply of fabrications to manufacturers of crushing and screening equipment — they were asking for larger components to minimise welding.

Also in 2010, Inishowen Engineering installed a second laser cutting machine — another BySprint CO2 4 x 2m model, but this time equipped with a powered ByLoader arm to assist manual handling of sheet and plate onto and off the shuttle table. The rationale for this configuration was two-fold. First, it was practical for the production of components in batch sizes that do not lend themselves to automated production. Secondly, it allowed efficient use of an operator’s time, as one person can look after the manually loaded laser cutter as well as the automated cell.

Last year, in addition to installing the fibre laser cutting machine and equipping it with the existing ByTrans to automate sheet handling, Inishowen Engineering took delivery of Bystronic’s smallest press brake, the recently launched Xpert 40, which has a 1m 40-tonne capacity. Some 60% of Inishowen Engineering’s parts are less than 1m long, so Bystronic’s introduction of this machine had been eagerly awaited.

“The Xpert 40 is at least one-third faster than larger press brake models, and the tooling is interchangeable,” said Mr McKinney. “The added speed translates into higher productivity when folding our smaller parts. In addition, the machine does not draw much power — just 7.5kW instead of typically 30kW for a big press brake — so we benefit from lower electricity bills as well.” The family-run sub-contractor is looking forward to a bright future, with a 250,000ft2 purpose-built factory due to open on the existing site by 2020; this will dwarf the current 75,000ft2 premises.