 Read in this month's THE FABRICATOR magazine how earlier this year Worthington Specialty Processing, a toll processor serving the automotive industry, among others, installed a continuous-feed, coil-fed, laser blanking line produced by LaserCoil Technologies...
 Industrial Laser Solutions Magazine provides in-depth coverage of how the LaserCoil process is fast and flexible.
Use of lasers for cutting blanks has proven to be a feasible technology for cutting shapes from stationary, sheared, rectangular-shaped blanks. But limitations in cutting speeds, coupled with challenges in finding efficient ways to integrate the technology into a mass production line for developed blanks, have hindered laser cutting for high-volume applications. Until recently, available solutions for applying lasers to sheet metal blanking typically incorporated robots (loading/unloading tables and destacking systems) to present an automated solution, essentially adding steps to the process. As such, laser cutting approaches were used only for prototype and very low-volume production of complex-shaped sheet metal blanks—read more using the link below...
  Automatic Feed Co., a related company to LaserCoil, is in their second year of partnering with the Napoleon City Schools high school STEM program. Investing in the education and hands-on skill training of motivated students is essential in fulfilling the demand for qualified workers pursuing careers in today’s manufacturing environment. Read more about how a local student’s practical experience at AFCO helped contribute to his goals for success.
Follow the button links below to lean more...  Shop Floor Lasers' senior editor, Jimmy Myers highlights the LaserCoil Technologies' fresh perspective on coil-stock laser blanking that takes the traditional table out of the equation while also making use of existing equipment. Follow the button below to read the article.
 An article by seasoned journalist Timothy Aeppel entitled, "Insight - U.S. firms blur investment picture by going 'lightweight'" features statements from Kim Beck, president and CEO of both LaserCoil and Automatic Feed Company (AFCO), regarding how AFCO’s unique approach to business investment led to the development of its breakthrough laser blanking process and the formation of LaserCoil Technologies company to bring it to market.
The article opens with... Kim Beck once considered owning his factory’s big production machines a big part of being a manufacturer. Not anymore. The chief executive of Automatic Feed Co., an 80-worker Ohio company that makes machines for auto plants, now leases most of his factory and its heavy equipment to another company that welds and cuts metal for him on the spot. That has freed up cash for him to hire engineers and programmers to design a new line of laser-driven products. "This is a much better way to do business," he says. Beck’s change of heart about heavy metal is part of a larger and lasting shift in how U.S. corporations invest. Instead of spending on buildings and big machines, companies are investing more in software and hi-tech equipment that is often lighter and less expensive than the "monuments" of the past. Many firms, for instance, are shifting to cloud services for back-office operations that once required them to buy and maintain their own systems. Read the balance by following the link below to the Reuters website.  LaserCoil Technologies LLC will highlight its multiple cutting head, coil-fed laser system, which allows a shared balancing of the workload to decrease processing time and improve productivity. The laser blanking systems are especially well-suited to chevron-style cuts where the pitch length is longer than 1.3 meters.
The multiple head LaserCoil machines, patented since 2010 and now available to customers, can improve production rates by an average of 85 percent as compared to a single head system. These higher throughput rates make laser cutting of blanks a viable option as compared to mechanical stamping, eliminating the need for dies and achieving greater flexibility and quicker changeover. LaserCoil coil-fed blanking systems can process a wide variety of material in aluminum, mild steel, the new high-strength steels, and other materials for surface sensitive panels as well as structural components in thicknesses from 0.5 to 3.5mm and up to 2.1m wide coil at any length. Additionally, the laser cutting heads deliver three-axis of motion (X-Y-Z) enabling cutting of tightly nested, complex curvilinear shapes.  In July’s Modern Metals, read how Precision Strip (Minster, Ohio) and LaserCoil Technologies addressed the auto industry trends of low volume production models as well as the challenge of stamping today’s advanced high strength steels. You can find a hard copy of the magazine in July and a digital version coming to the Modern Metals website edition in September, at.... www.modernmetals.com
 LaserCoil Technologies LLC announced today that it has received an order for a LaserCoil coil-fed blanking system from SET Enterprises, Inc., a processor of flat rolled metal primarily for the automotive industry. The 2100-mm wide dual-head system, featuring two-6kW lasers, is being installed at the company’s New Boston, Mich. facility, where SET processes blanks for the automotive industry.
“LaserCoil’s solutions give SET the ability to provide their customers with superior blank quality in all grades of advanced engineered materials,” said Victor Edozien, Chairman and CEO of SET. “This capability is critical in an increasingly dynamic automotive industry that is transitioning to support Advanced High Strength Steels and Aluminum alloys. The capability and flexibility of LaserCoil’s system, in combination with SET’s operating experience, gives us the manufacturing agility and responsiveness to rapidly meet our customers’ most complex metal processing needs. In addition to the advanced processing capabilities provided by the LaserCoil hardware, their control system and laser blanking operating system software allow us to maximize our blanking efficiency. Our lines will deliver solutions to our customers in a fraction of the time required by traditional blanking.” An additional benefit of the software programming capabilities is the ability to maximize raw material usage and reduce scrap. As automotive OEMs increase the use of Aluminum and Advanced High Strength Steels, optimizing metal processing yields and reducing scrap is a critical consideration. LaserCoil’s coil-fed laser cutting technology, featuring numerous patents, is based on over half a decade of research and successful production runs since 2012. Gantry-mounted laser heads stationed in multiple cutting cells travel along the moving strip to balance the workload for improved productivity. The system’s dynamic profile conveyor features adjustable lanes that support the coil strip while automatically repositioning as needed to clear a path for the laser cut. This feature also facilitates gravity-shedding of scrap and offal, delivering only totally finished blanks at the end of the process. This robust design enables higher production rates than other laser cutting equipment making the coil fed laser blanking system a viable alternative for processing a wide variety of coil material in aluminum, mild steel, high-strength steels and other sheet materials, in thicknesses from 0.5mm to 3.5mm and up to 2100-mm wide coil at any length. About SET Enterprises, Inc. SET Enterprises, Inc. (“SET” or the “Company”) headquartered in Warren, MI, is a leading provider of advanced metal processing solutions for OEMs & Tier 1 automotive customers. SET’s delivers innovative customer-centric solutions from multiple, strategically located and state of the art manufacturing facilities in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Alabama. Founded in 1989, SET has grown from a single blanking line to processing over 800,000 tons of metals annually through 6 slitting and 14 blanking lines. SET also provides OEM customers with turn-key metal processing value chain solutions through a Total Customer Solutions platform. These solutions include material sourcing, inventory management, JIT processing and logistics. For more information about SET, visit their website at: www.setenterprises.com  LaserCoil Technologies LLC announced today that it has received an order for a LaserCoil coil-fed blanking system from Worthington Specialty Processing (WSP), a toll processor for the automotive industry. The 2100-mm wide dual-head system, featuring two-6kW lasers, is being installed at the company’s Jackson, Mich. facility to help expand WSP’s capacity, especially in the production of Advanced High Strength Steel (AHSS) blanks, which can challenge traditional mechanical presses.
“As we partner with our automotive customers to develop solutions for reducing the weight of vehicles, this laser blanking system will give us the flexibility to run a variety of materials including AHSS and aluminum,” said Greg Shakley, General Manager at Worthington Specialty Processing. The increased tensile and yield strength of AHSS has little to no impact on laser cutting speeds, so the cost of laser consumables is much less than maintaining the die and tooling. Additionally, the ease of the LaserCoil system programming enables production changeovers in less than a day, significantly reducing the typical 14 – 16 weeks required to produce a final blanking die. LaserCoil’s coil-fed laser cutting technology featuring numerous patents is based on over half a decade of research and successful production runs since 2012. Gantry-mounted laser heads stationed in multiple cutting cells travel along the moving strip to balance the workload for improved productivity. The system’s dynamic profile conveyor features adjustable lanes that support the coil strip while automatically repositioning as needed to clear a path for the laser cut. This feature also facilitates gravity-shedding of scrap and offal, delivering only totally finished blanks at the end of the process. This robust design enables higher yield rates than other systems – into the 60,000 piece range – making it a viable alternative for processing a wide variety of coil material in aluminum, mild steel, high-strength steels and other materials, as well as structural components in thicknesses from 0.5 to 3.5mm and up to 2100-mm coil at any length. The coil fed laser blanking line will combine LaserCoil’s laser blanking technology along with leveling equipment supplied by the Automatic Feed Company (Napoleon, Ohio). The new line at WSP is expected to be running production by early 2016. Read the release at: PRweb.com |
NEWSVisit often and keep up with how we're redefining blanking. AFCO NEWS
Read about the latest news for our affiliate Automatic Feed Co. here... Archives
April 2020
Categories |
RSS Feed