A sheet metal subcontractor, specialising in lower-volume, higher-specification work, has invested in a CNC laser cutting system, two press brakes and 3D offline programming software.
A sheet metal subcontractor, specialising in lower-volume, higher-specification work, has invested in a CNC laser cutting system, two press brakes and 3D offline programming software.
Brian Palmer, managing director of Tharsus Engineering, has a clear vision of where the company's future lies, and has just invested in LVD technology to give him the capacity to achieve it.
"What we want to do is move up the knowledge ladder," he says.
"We have actively tried to specialise in lower-volume, higher-specification work, because if you only quote on volume jobs you risk losing them abroad.
A good job for us is one where we can apply a bit of thought and make money by doing it intelligently.
There are still jobs where we are quoting against drawing, but more and more we are doing the design, making the prototypes and taking it into production." The new LVD equipment supplied to Tharsus includes a CNC laser cutting system, two press brakes and CADMAN B 3D offline programming software.
The whole package has been selected to complement existing capabilities, including Radan offline programming software, so that the company has the best possible range of equipment to do the type of work that it wants to target.
According to Palmer, the fundamental reason for buying the laser was that the company's two punch presses were at saturation point and he needed additional capacity.
"The laser opens new markets to us and gives us new capability, but it is our job to make sure that we put profitable work on it.
There is a temptation to go and fill up its capacity, but we need to be intelligent and put the work on it that is going to give us the margins.
We are unlikely to have a competitive advantage over a specialist laser shop, for example.
One of the skills we are going to have to develop is routeing jobs intelligently.
There are lot of advantages to having a laser, and it was the one bit of capability that the business didn't have.
So we knew we wanted a laser and what clinched it for LVD was the Axel's cost-to-performance ratio." The two new press brakes at Tharsus have also been chosen to fill in the gaps in existing capability.
The company already has a press brake with a pressure referencing bend compensation system, but LVD's Easy Form Laser system offers a number of advantages on certain types of part.
"The pressure referencing system needs to be operating at 10% of maximum tonnage, but on many of the smaller and thinner parts that Tharsus forms, the bending force may be measured in hundreds of kilos rather than tonnes," says Palmer.
"As with the Axel, the Easy Form Laser press brake complements our existing capacity and offers us advantages in certain areas.
If we are intelligent in the way we use the machines we've now got all the bases covered." Palmer says: "We need this type of system because we are programming offline using the CADMAN B 3D and Radan software and we want to deskill the forming.
Offline programming means that instead of the machines standing idle while someone is doing the programming you can send the program down the wire to the machine.
The operator does not have to know how to program or work out how to produce a complex part, and the Easy Form Laser means that angle correction, which is one of the more skilled elements of press braking, is essentially automated too." The final piece in the 'jigsaw' is LVD's recently launched PPRM.
This is a fast, compact machine that takes advantage of reluctance motor technology first developed for the textile industry to achieve far higher bending speeds than conventional hydraulic machines.
It can deliver working speeds of up to 25mm/s and is ideal for bending small- to medium-sized high-precision parts.
Palmer says that before Tharsus had the PPRM the bigger machines were often only bending at a fraction of their capacity - using only a small part of the bed length and tonnage available.
"A lot of the time we were using 100 tonf (1000kN) , 3m bed length machines to form parts that only required hundreds of kilos of bend force, which meant they were not operating anywhere near as quickly as they could have been.
The PPRM frees up the bigger machines to do what they do best, and it is a faster, more intelligent use of capability.
The PPRM is a light machine - you can move it round with a forklift, it has a very small footprint and the tooling is compatible with our other machines.
It is the highest specification machine of its size on the market." * About LVD Strippit - The LVD Strippit Group designs, manufactures and distributes a comprehensive range of sheet metal/plate working equipment, including laser cutting systems, turret punch presses, press brakes, guillotines and automated flexible manufacturing systems - all supported by its CADMAN PC-based, Windows compatible programming system for punching, laser cutting and bending.
The Group's UK subsidiary, LVD, has its headquarters, showroom and service centre in Banbury, Oxfordshire.
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