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CATEGORY: BEST GRINDING/ABRASIVE MACHINE TOOL
The start of the manufacturing process - including functions such as
storage and sawing - also needs automating
Material to machine
Kastogripspeed 10
production circular saw
launched at MACH2008
has a pulling vice for
economical small to
medium batch cuttingto-length
and order
cutting of mixed sizes.
MACHINE tools have become more and more
automated over the past decade as manufacturers,
particularly in the West, have sought to maximise
productivity and minimise labour costs to compete with
low-wage economies. Now automation is increasingly
being adopted right at the start of the manufacturing
process, according to Kasto. Located in the Black Forest,
the family-owned German company manufactures
computer controlled equipment to fulfil the first two
functions in a factory - storage and sawing of raw
material. Efficiency in these areas is essential for keeping
production machines fed and avoiding downtime. In
most stockholding companies, storage and sawing are the
only functions, so their efficiency is even more
important.
There is little doubt that industry is taking upstream
factory logistics seriously. Recent sales figures released by
Kasto reveal that its turnover of ¤65m in 2004 soared by
over 80% to ¤118m last year and the order book in
February 2008 stood at ¤160m. A large majority of this
business is in top-end, automated storage systems for bar
and other long stock, for sheet metal, and for stillages and
palletised materials. Similarly on the sawing machine side
of the business, highly specified bandsaws and circular
saws complete with automation and sorting of cut pieces
are very much in vogue.
In the UK, the Southampton subsidiary has seen a
similar move towards higher levels of automation.
Managing director Ernst Wagner reports 22% sales
growth last year compared with 2006, the manufacturing
80 MWP april 2008
sector taking delivery of 40% of Kasto products and
stockholding the remainder. He comments: ‘Three
quarters of our bandsawing machine sales last year were
high-performance Kastotec machines designed for
cutting with tungsten carbide-tipped rather than highspeed
steel blades. Customers are also tending to choose
peripheral equipment such as inclined and universal
magazines for loading material automatically, and various
unmanned solutions for offloading, sorting and marking
cut pieces on the output side of the saws.’
It is much more difficult to sell carbide circular sawing
machines in the UK, however, as their 6 to 10 times
higher productivity compared with bandsaws is rarely
needed. High volume contracts in the automotive and
bearing industries, for example, have generally
disappeared overseas.
Breakthrough in sawing nickel alloys
There is one niche area where there is interest, though,
and that is in cutting nickel alloys. It is largely because a
Japanese blade manufacturer has made one of the most
significant advances in circular saw blades for a decade,
namely the development of a coated carbide grade that
lasts for typically 100 cuts in nickel alloy rather than 10.
Cutting performance was there before, but not blade
longevity, making the process uneconomic.
A number of industry sectors are showing interest,
such as aerospace, offshore, and automotive
manufacturers for the production of valve seat inserts.
The alternative method of cutting nickel using abrasive
cut-off discs creates a large kerf of between 6 and 10mm
that generates a lot of waste material, which is lost as
powder. A circular saw blade, by contrast, typically has a
2.5mm kerf and the swarf is recyclable.
Kastogripspeed 10, introduced to the company’s
circular sawing portfolio, is ideal for deploying the new
carbide blades for cutting up to 102mm diameter solid bar,
or 80mm square. The machine has a vice for pulling stock
through the machine rather than pushing it, as with most
automatic circular saws for production work. It is
therefore capable of economical cutting-to-length of
medium down to small quantities and can even be used
for order-cutting stock of mixed sizes and cross section. In
one test at a UK site at the beginning of 2008, 28 mm
diameter Nimonic 80A was cut in 11.5 seconds with a
Kanefusa 120-tooth blade running at 40 m/min and feed
per tooth (fz) of 0.035 mm. The saw is equally efficient at
cutting high tensile strength steels.
High technology storage systems
Continues Ernst Wagner: ‘Similarly with storage systems,
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