Product category:
Sawing and cutting-off machines and automation systems
News Release from: Kasto | Subject: Wagner saws
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 20 February 2001
Automotive supplier takes accurate cuts
Carringworth is sawing material ranging from aluminium to tool steel of over 240 Brinnell hardness to +/- 0.1 mm length tolerance and high squareness accuracy, 24 h/day, five days/week.
Chopping up metal bar into billets does not prompt most people to think of high precision machining Yet at the Port Talbot factory of Carringworth, material ranging from aluminium to tool steel of over 240 Brinnell hardness is sawn to +/- 0.1 mm length tolerance and high squareness accuracy, 24 hours a day, five days a week
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 23 May 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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When the second tier automotive supplier set up its plant in South Wales two years ago, it approached Rivers Machinery to supply two Wagner WAC70 automatic circular sawing machines to do this work.
Ninety per cent of the firm's power steering, fuel and braking system components involve billets so the company takes very seriously their production and supply.
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Said technical director, Bob Hare, "We chose Wagner saws as they had the best bar handling system.
You simply load up to two tonnes of stock by fork lift truck onto the bundle loader, cut the tape keeping the bars together, enter the program and push the start button.
The machine does not stop until it has finished the batch run.
"Other saws we looked at were single-bar machines and would not have been productive enough.
We make up to 100,000 cuts a week from solid stock ranging in diameter from 11 mm to 70 mm, so speed is of the essence for us.
The machine is ideal for reliable, just-in-time supply to production lines." The 2.2 kW drive delivers variable blade speeds up to 50 m/min and infeed may also be closely controlled, ensuring optimum productivity from the carbide-tipped saw blade according to the material being cut.
Contributing to the same goal is rapid material infeed and a hydraulically buffered measuring stop, the position of which can be computer controlled.
Long periods of automatic running allow one person to operate both machines, so labour costs are minimised.
Billets are cut into lengths ranging from 15 mm to 160 mm, but Carringworth takes advantage of spare capacity on the saws to cut stock into longer lengths to run in the short bar magazines feeding its mill-turning machines.
Commented Paul Lebbon, director in charge of the Port Talbot site, "The up-time of these saws is good - in per centage terms it is in the high 90s.
Reliability is key for us, as four fifths of the billets are delivered daily to our head office in Small Dole near Brighton, so any hiccup in production would affect both our manufacturing sites." So pleased is Carringworth with these saws, which now form part of Kasto's machine range also marketed in the UK by Rivers, that the company installed a third WAC70 at its French factory when it set up operations in Chalon-sur-Saone at the beginning of 1999.
A fourth machine is on order to increase production capacity further at Port Talbot.
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