Metal Forming, Fabricating, Lasers, and Gear Generation

Flexibility and innovation drive these fields

Gleason Corp. (Rochester, NY) will be offering several new machines with the goal of more sales in the jobbers market.

Their Genesis vertical hobbing machine optimizes dry machining and reduces floor-space requirements. It's intended for spur and helical gear manufacture.

Gleason will also be offering more equipment for gear metrology applications, through their M&M Precision Systems Corp., a manufacturer of gear inspection and process control systems. One of the newer units in their Sigma series is specifically for small-part measurement.

Lincoln Electric (Cleveland) will emphasize welding of aluminum because of its cosmetic appearance, and the fact that it can be welded quickly. "This is a growth area, and there is a lot of opportunity, particularly from the transplant companies," says Geoff Lipnezicius, application manager.

The company is focusing on custom systems and firsttime users of automatic systems. Also, because of new OSHA pollution regulations, there is a growing interest in fume-recovery systems.

"We are offering a new process, a rapid-arc, single-wire application that can provide welding speeds of 90-100 ipm [2.3-2.5 m/min] in aluminum using the MIG process," says Lipnezicius.

Although vision systems for welding are still used, they have been replaced in many applications with smart sensors on robots that can guide the welding operation.

"Increasingly, people are asking for reach analysis. This allows you to just drop-in new systems.

"Another featured product is the E-cell. A compact robotic system that is plug and play, is suited for job shops, and takes up only 60 x 90'' [1524 x 2286 mm] of floor space. It's a good design for the smaller shop or those just getting introduced to welding."

A broad range of equipment will be shown by ESAB (Florence, SC), with a focus on a new hybrid laser welding system that has been in the works for some time. It consists of a 10,000-W, fiber-laser system mounted on a gantry with a CNC control on a MIG welding system. "This unit is 5-10 times faster than conventional welding," says Jeff Hoffart, general manager and senior vp. "It automatically compensates for difficult fit-up. A laser and MIG unit work together. The laser preheats the work area and the welder fills. It's going to change the way manufacturers view welding. It uses 10% of the welding material commonly used and heat input is much less, so the smaller HEZ allows you to do things that couldn't be done before. This includes use of conventional steel in a wider number of applications, and also easier welding of dissimilar materials."

The sensor system evaluates the joint and makes dynamic changes, including wire feed, arc voltage, wattage, and travel speed. Sensors look at both the front and back of the weld, and send corrective signal to the system control.

Jet Edge (Saint Michael, MN) will feature an abrasive waterjet cutting system with upgraded intensifier pumps and controller.

"We are finding new markets as the industry matures and the pool of customers grows," says Tom Macgibbon, VP. "This process can be applied to any industry, from food to hard metals.

"We will show a new cutting head with a nozzle designed for longer life and greater cut accuracy. In addition, programs and software are improving rapidly as we move toward a plug-and-play capability.

"As abrasive waterjet becomes a more widely accepted process, we have to put greater emphasis on service and maintenance."

A 200-hp (150-kW) hydraulic pump will be featured by KMT. It has more capacity than previous pumps and is capable of delivering water at 60,000 psi (42 MPa) to up to 32 cutting heads.

As to trends:

* More turnkey contracts as waterjet becomes better known for its versatility.

* More installations in which a number of cutting heads are run from one pump.

* Greater ease of use. Many of the calculations and setup requirements of earlier machines have been eliminated.

* Key industries are medical and stone work.

The company is working on a new head design that will minimize the erosion caused by the abrasive.

"We've seen an increasing level of interest in cutting with shop air to reduce the cost per part," said Burke Doar, vice president Trumpf Inc. (Plymouth Township, MI). "New technology makes compressed air a viable and cost-effective alternative to oxygen and nitrogen as laser assist gasses. This Trumpf process is well suited to a variety of applications for sheet metal fabricators."

At the IMTS show, Trumpf will focus on "air cutting" on the TCL 2510. In this air-cutting technique compressed air is used as a laser assist gas to cut steel, stainless steel, galvanized steel, and aluminum. Air cutting is faster and more cost-effective than cutting with oxygen and nitrogen, and offers an edge finish with much less oxidation than an oxygen-cut edge.

Cutting with compressed air works differently than cutting with oxygen or nitrogen as assist gasses. Cutting with air generates a plasma. Laser energy brought to a tight focal position and the introduction of compressed air creates a plasma ball at the surface of the material. An advantage of cutting with this plasma is that the heat is transferred more effectively than by the laser beam itself. In fact, the cutting speed is often increased to avoid over-melting the material edge.

In addition, the high-speed laser-cutting TCL 2510 machine is designed to run untended. It has integrated, compact, load and unload capabilities for automated production. All of the components were designed to offer users a cost-effective option for automated laser production. The flying-optic design achieves high processing speeds and consistent accuracy independent of material weight. Optimal cut consistency is assured by integral mounting of the laser resonator to the machine frame. The integrated material-handling system reduces manual labor requirements and frees up the operator to concentrate on other tasks or operate another machine.

Mitsubishi will present its equipment in industry-specific areas: aerospace, medical, tooling, and EDM. The booth will define more clearly which machines have the features needed for a specific project. And this year the company will introduce their waterjet system. Prompted by a growing number of medical applications, the company will show how waterjet married to EDM can reduce production time.

"The two processes often compliment each other, with the waterjet used to remove large quantities of material and EDM doing the finishing work," explains Patrick Simon, manager, Mitsubishi EDM, MC Machinery Systems (Wood Dale, IL).

As to company trends,according to Michael Zakrzewski, executive vice president and general manager, cutting and bending will be featured at the Bystronic, (Hauppauge (NY) booth.

"Our goal is to focus on the highend precision metal markets. Overall, the waterjet is still in a strong growth position. Off-line software programming is getting easier. It's now simple to integrate one of our bending machines with the waterjet, and blend the operation with a CAD/CAM package. Our design keeps a balance between ease of use, and performance flexibility. The company also plans to introduce some larger machines in the US.

The biggest change is in the software, which gives better control over the cutting variables, such as abrasive flow and water pressure. "This gives the benefits of improved edge cut quality, tighter motion control, and improved cutting speed," explains Zakrzewski.

The Bystronic waterjet systems can be linked with a shuttle table to give speedy material handling, so the user can handle material while a plate is being cut.

One trend that Fanuc Robotics (Rochester Hills, MI) will feature at IMTS is the use of intelligent robots, particularly for welding. Intelligent robots are able to perform advanced applications previously considered too complex for robots. They can also make existing applications more cost-effective. For example, intelligent robots with vision eliminate the need for expensive part fixtures.

Fanuc Robotics' exhibit at IMTS will include a wide range of robotic vision applications. In some cases, 3-D vision will allow the robot to find loosely located parts that can be offset in three dimensions. In other cases, the robot will use 2-D vision if the parts only vary in 2-D space (X, Y, and roll). The new Fanuc R-J3iC robot controller will demonstrate the ability to perform vision tasks without the need for an external PC or any additional hardware. All Fanuc robots come standard with vision, and only require a software option and a camera.

Delicate six-degrees-of-freedom force sensing will be used to perform assembly applications that previously required tactile feedback. One example is a robot that will assemble the gearbox of another robot.

Another trend is the use of a single controller to drive multiple robots. In one case, four arc welders will operate from a single controller. In another case, two material-handling toploader robots will use a single controller, demonstrating very precise coordinated motion. In a third demonstration, one material-handling robot will present the workpiece to another assembly robot.

The products that follow this article will be shown in the Metal Forming, Fabricating, and IMSCT pavilion at IMTS. -Roben Arunson


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Castle Metals Continuously Upgrades Waterjet System

Castle Metals' Kansas City Facility has continuously upgraded and improved its abrasive waterjet system.

Today, the company not only provides material, but also offers "toll processing" or custom cutting on its waterjet system for large parts and any size production runs.

Castle Metal's ESAB system, is one of the largest in the Midwest featuring: four cutting heads, two-100 HP intensifiers, CNC controls, two large tandem tables (13' x 25' and 13' x 13') water chillers, four1,000 lb abrasive hoppers, abrasive recycling, and a water purification system.


This specialized system is the result of over five years of work by the Castle Metals' Kansas City crew. The team's effort has not only helped the company develop its current configuration in KC but has allowed Castle Metals to mirror this system in its Wichita, KS facility to support the overall waterjet efforts in the Midwest.

"The company recognized the potential for abrasive waterjet cutting in 1998," stated Dan Bentz, abrasive waterjet sales manager. "Then we realized how inefficient our first system was for the market at that time, so our team went back to the drawing board and designed the layout for our current systems. We focused on improving the process by breaking it down into components: cutting, motion control, pressure, water purification & cooling, etc. and developed a much more efficient and cost-effective system. Now we can offer our customers improved service and efficiency, bottom line cost savings! All of these items combined have helped us make the overall benefits of the waterjet process more affordable for our customers."

A special video section on the company's website: www.castlemetals.com/html/ am_videos.asp demonstrates the waterjet system.

The waterjet team at Castle Metals worked very closely with different manufactures to develop its system. Today, these companies send potential customers to the Castle Metals KC facility to view the stateof-the-art system and take advantage of its unique capabilities.

Any customer that uses a CAD based system can forward DXF or DWG file extensions for ease of conversion.

Besides the abrasive waterjet operation, the KC facility is also a fullservice metal distribution center.

The 155,000-sq.-ft plant, carrying over $6 million of inventory, offers: bar, plate, coil, sheet, tubing and pipe in a wide range of metals including: carbon, cast iron, alloy, aluminum, stainless, nickel, titanium, copper and brass.

Processing and services provided at the ISO 9002 certified company include: aluminum plate sawing, bar cutting, plasma (profile & beveling) & flame cutting, stress relieving, shot blasting, and blanchard grinding.

Castle Metals, a 113-year-old company, has been in the KC area for over 56 years. The KC facility is part of the Central Plains Region, which includes the geographic areas of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The company has 22 service centers across the U.S. including Wichita, KS and Tulsa Oklahoma.


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