![A laer cuts metal.](https://cdn.thefabricator.com/a/the-business-case-for-high-powered-laser-cutting-1696453663.jpg?size=1000x)
Cupples’ J&J Co.’s 30-kW fiber laser slices via 3/4-in. hot-rolled pickled and oiled materials at 228 IPM.
Editor’s Notice: This in-depth have a look at high-powered fiber laser slicing at Cupples’ J&J Co. Inc. in Jackson, Tenn., is the primary in a two-part collection.
Years in the past, every time I visited a precision sheet metallic store, somebody would boast concerning the slicing velocity, the inches per minute (IPM) they had been reaching with that 2-, 3-, or 6-kW CO2 laser system. Then the fiber laser got here alongside. Discuss of jaw-dropping IPM figures burst forth—then quieted down.
Everybody quickly realized the fiber laser reduce skinny sheet so shortly that it outpaced all the things else on the machine, together with the pallet tables and drive programs. Downstream bottlenecks turned an issue too. What good is awfully quick slicing if it creates a denesting bottleneck?
Jeff Cupples, although, nonetheless quotes IPM numbers on a regular basis, however he’s not speaking about slicing gauge materials. He’s speaking about plate—thick plate. For many years, he’s helped construct a customized fabricator well-known in laser slicing circles for pushing the envelope. At this writing, Jackson, Tenn.-based Cupples’ J&J Co. has 24 laser slicing machines, together with two 30-kW programs and a 40-kW system on the way in which, full with bevel slicing.
The store is now slicing 3/4-in.-thick metal at a tempo just like the speeds it reduce 11-ga. sheet twenty years in the past—at 225 IPM or extra (see Determine 1). As we walked via the plant’s high-powered laser slicing space, Cupples pointed to numerous elements, all reduce cleanly, with no dross or deep striations. “We reduce that 5/8-in. materials at 290 IPM. And we may reduce it quicker, however that’s a manufacturing half, so we’ve dialed it again a bit.”
Cupples focuses on velocity however has a cautious eye on total course of reliability and consistency. He and the staff scrutinize the whole course of, from loading the plate to denesting and edge high quality inspection. With all the corporate’s laser slicing energy, it has no flat-part deburring, deoxidizing, or leveling machine. Even lengthy or oddly formed elements emerge clear and stack flat, no half leveling required.
Driving the fabricator’s success has been these dramatic reductions in total processing time. One ¾-in. job the corporate fabricated two years in the past took over two hours to make with a 6-kW CO2 laser slicing machine. Right now, a nest of these elements is reduce on an ultrahigh-powered fiber laser in simply over 19 minutes, denested shortly, then despatched on to robotic welding.
That point financial savings opens a world of prospects in a fabrication market benefiting from elevated infrastructure and industrial spending. In impact, these envelope-pushing efforts are serving to Cupples’ J&J keep forward in a fast-growing area of interest: precision plate fabrication.
How Cupples’ J&J Advanced
Cupples’ father James (one among two “James” who in 1966 based the corporate, therefore the J&J moniker) moved to the present location in Jackson in 1979. At that time, Cupples’ J&J was a small machine store. When equipment broke at native processing vegetation, Cupples was referred to as on to ship machined elements in a rush. By the early Nineteen Nineties, the corporate had dipped its toe into precision metallic fabrication, and by the late Nineteen Nineties, the fabrication enterprise began to blow up. Right now, sheet and plate fabrication comprise greater than half of the fabricator’s income, and far of that includes elements with machined parts.
Within the precision fab area, the corporate has turn into well-known for its high-powered lasers, but it surely nonetheless processes the gamut of grades and thicknesses, from gauge materials on up. It has a big plasma desk and a 95-KSI waterjet for specialised jobs or workpieces that may’t tolerate a heat-affected zone.
![Two men stand by a laser machine.](https://cdn.thefabricator.com/a/the-business-case-for-high-powered-laser-cutting-1696453670.jpg?size=1000x)
(From left) Jeff Cupples and Mike Etheridge, laser technician, stand by the corporate’s 30-kW fiber laser from Cutlite Penta. Cupples’ J&J Co. has labored intently with numerous machine distributors through the years to push the technological envelope.
“We’ve been heavy into meals processing tools for many years,” Cupples stated, “together with something that goes within the storage, mows the grass, or strikes the grime. These are good, primary mainstay industries for us.”
A number of years in the past, the corporate’s administration staff moved right into a facility throughout the street from one among its foremost vegetation. To the east, the fabricator has regularly acquired acres of land. The unique machine store sat on a 4-acre plot. Right now, the group owns greater than 80 acres, all quickly to be zoned for industrial use. Already one of many largest contract metallic fabricators within the nation, Cupples’ J&J has fairly the runway for even additional progress (see Determine 2).
The Ripple Results of Precision Plate Reducing
Again within the CO2 laser days, many thought {that a} materials thickness of little past 1 in. was laser slicing’s sensible restrict, contemplating the form of the beam and its depth of focus. When fiber lasers got here on the scene within the late 2000s, everybody noticed them as machines good for skinny sheet slicing. Wish to reduce thick? Keep on with the CO2 machine.
How occasions have modified. Ultrahigh-power fiber lasers—with their extensive beams, extraordinary energy density, superior slicing heads, managed gasoline movement, and complicated nitrogen-oxygen help gasoline mixing and supply—have blown these assumptions out of the water. Right now, Cupples’ J&J has examined slicing 1.5 and even 2-in.-thick plate, delving deep into precision plasma’s territory (see Determine 3).
Pushing the laser slicing envelope doesn’t come with out threat. A number of years in the past, as fiber lasers providing 12 kW and past hit the market, Cupples’ J&J jumped in as an early adopter and skilled its fair proportion of complications. “We blew about 14 heads over a interval of 10 months,” Cupples stated, including that the corporate has needed to endure lengthy intervals of down machines ready to be serviced. “I can’t assist it. I’m a mechanical engineer. If I can’t break it, it can work. So we are going to attempt to push expertise to the sting of what it could actually do.”
He’s communicated regularly with laser slicing machine distributors through the years, together with TRUMPF, Bystronic, Eagle, and, most just lately, Cutlite Penta. Machine techs have spent period of time at Cupples’ store, which has became a type of “real-world” testing lab for the bleeding edge in fiber laser slicing, particularly for plate materials.
This all would possibly sound a tad quixotic. All that machine downtime doesn’t come low-cost. Additionally, such heavy-plate slicing is tough to automate. Wielding magnets and generally hammers (although most elements have perfected kerf geometries in order that they raise out simply), operators must take these heavy elements out of a reduce nest by hand. Even with all its lasers, the fabricator depends on shuttle tables and handbook elements offloading.
Look downstream, although, and you start to see what staff name “the Cupples means.” The operation has 39 press brakes, many grouped strategically close to a high-powered laser. Some brakes are new, with multiaxis backgauges and all of the bells and whistles. However some are retrofitted with new CNCs and mattress surfaces remachined to eradicate any ram upset and guarantee forming accuracy. (“We’re a machine store,” Cupples stated. “We will machine these [brake bed surfaces]. It’s what we do.”)
Some have X-axis stops with fingers fitted with precision-laser-cut templates, contoured for particular elements that in any other case couldn’t be bent productively on a brake with such a easy backgauge (see Determine 4). Operators aren’t spending hours struggling to set these machines up, both. The brakes may be outdated, however they’re nicely maintained, have high quality tooling, and are set as much as type particular jobs with particular materials from a particular service middle and mill. Cupples’ J&J scrutinizes the fabric it buys (together with some very thick hot-rolled pickled and oiled inventory), monitoring its energy, floor high quality, and total consistency—and each laser slicing and forming profit from that.
Cupples has loads of machining capabilities, so the forming areas have racks of customized instruments, from particular offsets to radius types. It additionally has an in depth rack of laser-cut verify fixtures. Operators type items, place them within the verify fixture, then transfer on to the following piece. The identical goes for rolling. An operator initiates a rolling sequence, measures the beforehand rolled half in a verify fixture because the plate roll finishes its cycle. She then retrieves the following rolled piece. It’s a ballet of rigorously choreographed effectivity (see Determine 5).
![A business sign stands in front of Cupples office.](https://cdn.thefabricator.com/a/the-business-case-for-high-powered-laser-cutting-1696453674.jpg?size=1000x)
The company workplace sits throughout the road from one of many foremost vegetation in Jackson, Tenn., providing fabrication and screw machining. Behind this plant are a number of fabrication and machining amenities—and loads of open acreage for future growth. One other Cupples’ J&J plant is in Dyersburg, Tenn.
Stroll right down to welding, and also you see rows of welding robotic cells adjoining to an extended rack filled with fixtures, all made in-house. Right here is the place machined elements and fabricated plate come collectively (see Determine 6). And seeing simply how shortly and easily these parts come collectively reveals the rationale behind Cupples’ quest for ultrahigh-power laser slicing precision.
Cupples pointed to at least one 5/8-in.-thick plate, staged for fixturing close to a robotic weld cell. “See that? There’s lower than a 0.005-in. taper on that reduce edge. We couldn’t obtain that even with our ultrahigh-definition plasma. We used to plasma reduce this, then ship it to machining. Now, it’s done-in-one in laser slicing.”
The slicing course of feeds all the things else, and the extra dialed in that slicing is, the extra environment friendly the whole operation turns into. Pushing the envelope isn’t straightforward, however the payoff might be seen all through Cupples’ store. Jobs movement out the door; on-time supply charges stay almost excellent (nicely above 95%). All that productiveness has allowed Cupples to take a position aggressively whereas nonetheless being financially conservative. “We personal each machine now we have,” Cupples stated, “and we pay money for brand spanking new machines we purchase.”
Removed from quixotic, it seems that Cupples’ J&J isn’t chasing windmills in any case.
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