Plant reliability is vital for any manufacturing enterprise, but particularly for a sub-contractor starting out with a single machine tool. This was the position Danny Fantom found himself in at the start of last year, when he formed FC Laser Ltd to provide laser cutting and forming services.
Previous good experience with equipment from Coventry-based Bystronic UK Ltd
(www.bystronic.com) led him to order a 4.4kW Bysprint Pro flat-bed laser cutting machine, which was installed in FC Laser’s 9,000ft
2 facility in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, in June.
Mr Fantom says: “The machine has not missed a beat during more than 3,000 hours of operation. Moreover, it has been instrumental in expanding our customer base, from a single firm in the power-generating sector when we started to over 100 clients now — and new enquiries are coming in from many different industries every week.”
A rapid influx of business from the nuclear, shop-fitting, architectural and prestige automotive sectors has allowed FC Laser to grow quickly, from six staff at the outset to 12 currently — including two apprentices on day-release to Chesterfield College.
Mr Fantom underwent a five-year sheet metal-working apprenticeship at an aerospace company producing precision components and assemblies. He therefore knows the importance of training new engineers and, more specifically, the benefit of employing skilled staff who are familiar with the working practices at FC Laser.
Highlights of the company’s service include: quotation within an hour of receiving an enquiry; the rapid turn-round of orders (supported by 24/7 working when required); and next-day delivery anywhere in the UK — whether to a small business or a multi-national company.
Competitive prices are offered, partly as a result of running the Bysprint Pro ‘lights out’ after the 6am-10pm manned shifts. Thicker materials are normally processed during the night, with a sheet on each of the two beds providing up to 5hr of unattended production.
To ensure quick deliveries, one tonne of each standard gauge of mild steel from 0.9 to 20mm is held in stock, along with stainless steel from 0.9 to 15mm and aluminium up to 12mm. Sheet size is usually 3 x 1.5m, which is the nominal bed capacity of the laser.
“Our machine is very productive, with extremely fast acceleration and 169m/min simultaneous positioning speed,” says Mr Fantom. “It is capable of instantaneous hole piercing in material up to 10mm thick — and it can produce 600 holes per minute in 1mm mild steel.
“We produce various batch quantities of a variety of components from different materials, so quick machine change-over is important to minimise down-time. Operators can carry out a nozzle change to swap between processing 0.9 and 20mm materials in under a minute. That said, our second 4.4kW Bysprint Pro — this time with a larger cutting capacity of 4 x 2m — has the added advantage of automatic nozzle centring, which will further reduce machine down-time. It is scheduled for delivery in May and will open up additional markets to us.”
To supplement its profiling capability, FC Laser has installed a three-axis CNC press brake — also from Bystronic UK. This 150-tonne machine has a 3m bed and CNC crowning that ensures bends are accurate to less than 0.1mm and 0.25deg over the entire bed length. Three urgent jobs completed for The Shard in London (a week before it was officially opened in December) illustrate FC Laser’s rapid turn-round service. Stainless-steel stringers, aluminium cladding and mild-steel templates to assist the accurate drilling of glass panels were all supplied in very short time-frames.
The company also assisted Dr Chantelle Niblock from the University of Nottingham after she found the sub-contractor’s Web site by chance last September. Together with the Canadian company Philip Beesley Architects, she was instrumental in staging an exhibition of contemporary design — entitled Prototyping Architecture — on the Nottingham campus and at the Building Centre in London.
The work involved producing over 18,000 strands of aluminium which came together to create a spectacular, self-bracing mesh structure measuring about 10m across by 3m high — comprising flexible, lightweight, chevron-shaped linking components. The artwork acts like a tree, processing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Vehicle parts manufacture
A new Mitsubishi Electric eX3015 4.5kW laser cutting machine from Bridgnorth-based World Machinery Ltd
(www.worldmc.co.uk) has significantly improved manufacturing flexibility and capacity at PSS Ltd — a Norfolk-based manufacturer of power-steering components and other equipment for the commercial-vehicle, construction and agricultural-equipment markets.
The catalyst for the new machine purchase was the acquisition by PSS of George Moate Ltd, which manufactures specialist agricultural equipment, including the Tillerstar — an innovative tilling, de-stoning and bed preparation machine for the potato and root vegetable industry. PSS managing director Richard Pratt says: “We were already considering adding a laser cutting capability to our range of CNC manufacturing equipment, but it was the Tillerstar, which makes extensive use of sheet materials in its construction, that finally tipped the balance.”
Since its installation, the Mitsubishi laser machine has quickly become an integral part of PSS’s manufacturing operations, and the company is currently using it to process up to three tonnes of material a day; this includes steel, stainless and plastics in thicknesses ranging from 1.5 to 25mm.
“We chose the eX machine based on its speed of cutting and simplicity of programming,” says Mr Pratt. “For production work, we can download CAD files directly from our design office, but our operators also make use of the on-board CNC system for prototypes and short runs.”
The speed and flexibility of the new machine have allowed PSS to extend its use to a wide variety of other jobs, as well as the production of sheet parts for the Tillerstar.
“Now that we are getting used to the machine, we are finding new jobs for it all the time,” says Mr Pratt. “We are increasingly using it to rough out parts like washers that might previously have been cut from bar on one of our CNC lathes. We are also finding that we can now produce various sheet components that we would previously have out-sourced. This helps us to cut the number of parts we need to keep in stock and reduces our input costs.”
The addition of laser cutting has also allowed PSS to extend its range of customer services. “One of the key reasons companies come to us is our ability to be extremely flexible in the volumes we produce. We can manufacture anything from 10 parts or less to many hundreds, which benefits customers with older products or niche models that need supporting. Moreover, the capacity of the new machine is such that we are considering taking on sub-contract laser cutting work for other manufacturers.”
PSS has plans to further develop the capabilities of its Mitsubishi eX laser by adding a fourth axis. “We are 90% certain that we will go ahead with that modification, but we want to make sure we are comfortable operating the basic machine before adding the extra axis,” concludes Mr Pratt.