Carrickfergus-based Nijen Stainless Fabrications made its first venture into laser cutting when it bought a new Amada ENSIS-3015AJ 3kW fibre laser with a rotary-index facility (R1) — the first machine of its type in the UK and Ireland marketplace.

Until then, all Amada rotary-index laser cutting machines had been limited to those with CO₂ power sources.

Family-owned Nijen, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last year, has grown to become one of the leading stainless-steel manufacturers and fabricators in Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

The company operates from a 6,000ft,sup>2 factory and supplies its fabrication and machining services to a range of sectors in the UK and Ireland — predominantly transport and food, but also pharmaceutical, cold storage, medical, energy, architecture and art.

Nijen also offers a range of its own products, including bollards, cycle racks, street furniture, signage and hand rails, for example; and to ensure that the company can continue to compete ‘at the front end of the market’, its manufacturing capabilities are regularly reviewed, with cutting processes among the latest to ‘come under the spotlight’.

Nijen director Nigel Cathcart said: “We have never been afraid to invest. For us, ensuring that we keep pace with the market has always been a very important aspect of the business.

"With regard to our cutting processes, we were previously out-sourcing our laser profiling requirements, while working in-house with punching, guillotining and corner-notching machines.

"As such, there was a clear opportunity to save on sub-contracting costs — and improve productivity and process control — by investing in stainless-steel laser cutting technology.”

A visit to an in-house exhibition at Kidderminster-based Amada UK Ltd (www.amada.co.uk) revealed the benefits available from the latest laser technology.

Mr Cathcart said: “Seeing the ENSIS fibre laser with rotary-index unit highlighted the flexibility we could achieve, with the ability to process tube, channel and angle profiles in addition to sheet.

"We did look at machines from other suppliers, because we wanted to make sure that our decision was the right one. However, from a technology point of view, the ENSIS-RI satisfied all our requirements.”

Increasing workload

The ENSIS-RI has been extremely busy ever since it was installed in June 2019; a second shift is ‘coming on stream’, and Nijen is already considering a third.

“We are receiving an ever-increasing number of enquiries — from both existing and new customers — about what we can achieve with this new machines.

“In the very near future, we will be taking on a new design engineer to help leverage the benefits of the
machine by introducing new products and new revenue streams.”

In terms of sheet profiling, around 90% of Nijen’s capacity is used to process stainless steel up to 15mm thick; the rest is for cutting aluminium up to 12mm thick.

With regard to tube processing, the company cuts material up to 154mm in diameter, with wall thicknesses up to 6mm. Typical batch sizes are 80-150, although batches sometimes go up to 500.

Mr Cathcart says: “A lot of our tube work requires piercing, the profiling of special joints and cutting to length.

Previously, much of this would have been completed on a conventional milling machine, but the ENSIS has ‘blown that process out of the water’ with the speed it can cut.

"In particular, the rotary index is proving a big plus in terms of cost and time savings — and overall, the accuracy that we can achieve is very similar to that of a CNC milling machine, as is the quality of cut.”

The introduction of the ENSIS-RI has saved the previous cost of outsourcing the company’s laser cutting — and water-jet — requirements.

Furthermore, Nijen can now turn jobs round a lot faster, particularly as there is no transportation involved; work previously undertaken by a sub-contractor with a lead time of a few days can now be completed in-house within a few hours.

To complement the ENSIS-RI, Nijen recently installed a pre-owned and fully refurbished Amada HFE-1003M2 seven-axis long-stroke press brake, so that even higher levels of repeatability and precision can be achieved.

The integration of the Amada machines was aided by the installation of various Amada software solutions; these include V-factory, which provides real-time data from any Amada machine ‘anytime, anywhere’, using ‘any device with an Internet connection’.

The parameters monitored by V-factory range from current machine status and volume of work through to material usage, energy consumption and operation analysis.

Mr Cathcart says he anticipates that V-factory will ‘handshake’ with a soon-to-be-installed MRP system, helping to shape a digital future for the company.

He has also installed Amada’s VPSS 3i blank and tube automatic programming and nesting software, as well as Amada’s SheetWorks 3-D CAD.

“All of this investment has been prompted by a significant increase in the number of enquiries being received — and the variety of components these enquiries relate to.

"The Amada machines and software have effectively taken care of the additional skills we would have needed to meet these increasing customer requirements.

“Having the Amada technology in place means we can offer so many more solutions than previously; and even though we are a relatively small company, this investment shows that we have determination and the necessary capabilities to keep growing the company.”