sawing & tubeforming
A new high performance bandsaw enables a specialist metal stockholder serving the
aerospace sector to saw superalloys twice as quickly, and eliminate scrap
Supersaw performance
on superalloys
CYCLE times for cutting nickel and
titanium alloy materials have been halved at
the Milton Keynes stockholding centre of
Aviation Metals. This follows the installation
of a Kastotec AC4 bandsaw. Designed for
running tungsten carbide tipped blades, the
machine was fitted at the German factory
with a more powerful motor and special
gearbox to deliver higher torque at low speeds
for cutting tough superalloys more
efficiently. Sawing of fully heat-treated
engineering steels is even faster, with
typically a 60% reduction in cutting cycles
compared with the bandsaw previously used,
on which the carbide blade was run by a
motor approximately half as powerful as the
11kW drive on the KASTO machine.
Aviation Metals, a division of Apollo
within the privately owned, £500m-turnover
Murray Group, is a leading distributor of cut,
profiled and machined steels, superalloys and
aluminium products to the aerospace, defence
and other high technology industries. In
2006 it was nominated by Airbus as ‘best
service supplier’ following an international
survey of the aircraft OEM’s factories.
Lee Turner, customer service manager -
operations at the Milton Keynes site, says that
the Kasto machine is so productive it will pay
for itself within 16 months, based on
increased output over 48 weeks of two-shift
working, five days a week. This amortisation
period is actually conservative, as it was based
Stock being loaded by lift truck onto the
KASTOtec AC4 bandsaw at Aviation Metals
95mm Inconel 718 is sawn to length on the
AC4 in 7 minutes - it used to take 14
minutes on a lower power carbide bandsaw
on day shift labour rates and did not take into
account higher rates at night. The four-hour
period of unattended running between the
eight-hour manned shifts each day was not
factored in either, even though it is a net
gain, as it is not possible on the other
bandsaws.
Says Turner: ‘We went over to Kasto’s
factory in Achern to see the AC4
demonstrated, then calculated the payback
using the machine specification in the
brochure. What we predicted is happening in
practice; it means that the machine, which
was installed at the end of February this year,
will easily have paid for itself by July 2008.
Robustness of construction is a merit of the
construction of Kastotec bandsaws, as is use of
a 50mm wide blade that is more rigid at high
speeds than the 41mm blades used on other
saws at Milton Keynes. Another first on the
shop floor is constant blade deflection
monitoring on the AC4, with automatic
machine shutdown if a preset tolerance is
exceeded. Staff are therefore confident when
leaving valuable stock up to 430mm square
88 MWP november 2007
cross section to be cut unattended.
‘Between 3 and 4% scrap rate is usual when
cutting these difficult materials, yet we have
had no scrap at all from the Kasto machine,
leading to a large additional saving.’
continues Turner. ‘The control is easy to
program with stock dimensions, required
number of cut pieces, band speed and infeed
rate, after which the cycle is automatic, so the
resulting cut pieces are more consistent than
on our manually set saws. Additionally, as the
front vice is behind the blade, the rest piece at
35mm is around one third that of other
bandsaws, leading to even more material
savings.’
Service back-up from Kasto’s Southampton
subsidiary is regarded as very good. In
addition to training, Turner was impressed
with the speed and lack of fuss involved in
retrofitting a twin-button control to operate
the saw. The option had been overlooked at
the time of order, although it is Aviation
Metals’ policy to have dead-man controls
fitted to its machinery.
Concludes Lee Turner: ‘Nearly all our stock
at Milton Keynes is cut to length for
customers to a tolerance of -0/+1mm. Only
about 20% of output is aluminium, however,
so a majority of the throughput involves
sawing hard and/or tough metals. Despite
this, the uptime of the saw has been amazing
and there have been no major issues.’
www.kasto.uk.com
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