NC Rail in action

A cost comparison

THE JOB

The job we compared was the construction of an air conditioning ducting system in 0.6mm and 0.8mm PGI. It comprised 51 metres of straight duct plus 24 fittings of varying size and complexity.

The job was carried out manually (i.e. the hard way) at a medium sized sheet metal shop in Western Australia that specialises in air conditioning duct work. It involved three tradesmen overall.

The sheets were marked out manually, a guillotine and nibbler used for the cuts, while tin snips were used for the notches.

The same job was estimated for a workshop equipped with a current model plasma cutter from Design Correlations (i.e. the smart way).

The comparison is based on the process from the creation of patterns, through cutting and up to, but not including assembly.

Plasma cutting technology in action:

NC RAIL :: MEETING THE CHALLENGE

When Challenge Sheet Metal's Geoff Viner and his accountants sat down to weigh up the pros and cons of buying an NC Rail plasma cutter for the firm's fabrication business, they decided it would be a wise investment, with a probable payback period of four years.

Geoff Viner carries out a quality control check on bull-nose droppers for a spiral duct system. Computer control eliminates human error and variances on a run of identical components.

Their assessment was out by a factor of 12.

Just four months after the cutter was installed, Geoff's money was back in the bank and Challenge was heading into its most productive year ever.

"There was some luck involved. We bought the NC Rail at the start of a particularly busy period," said Geoff.

"All the same, the machine changed the way we worked.

"It's the most important piece of equipment in the factory - it does the work of six men."

In hindsight, Geoff believes he put off the purchase far too long.

"Five years ago it would have given us a serious competitive edge," he said.

"By the time we bought it, we knew we had to have a plasma cutter just to keep up with the competition."

Geoff admits being a bit nervous about the acquisition because he was not computer literate - "Solitaire and Minesweeper were about my limit - but this proved not to be a problem."

"We're talking here about equipment and software that were designed for hands-on tradesmen.

"If you understand ductwork production and you know how to turn your computer on, you'll be doing take-offs on your first day. We do exactly that with trainees. On the other hand, if you’re a computer whiz and you know nothing about ductwork, you might need a two-year apprenticeship."

Geoff says that while the NC Rail is very accurately machined, it is mechanically simple, which makes maintenance a breeze. And, being locally manufactured, help is never far away if needed.

The NC Rail's first job at Challenge was to construct its own exhaust system - an interesting learning curve including square-to-rounds, attenuators, and a radius-back 90°.

"We chose NC Rail over an imported machine costing more than twice as much, partly because it could do everything the imported machine could do, but mainly because we knew we'd get reliable back-up. If you import something like this it will arrive on your doorstep in a box, and from there you're on your own."

Geoff says the issue of spare parts and back-up is so important he would have chosen NC Rail even if it had been priced as high as the imported machine.

"Chris (Chris Probert, designer of NC Rail) is available by phone day and night, and can always talk you through any problem that might crop up.

"The best example is the call I made one morning, and Chris sounded as though I'd just woken him up. He asked me to give him five minutes to get his head clear, and he'd call me back. Turned out he was in Dubai for a trade show, but he made the time to sort out my problem, and he insisted on calling me back so I wouldn’t be paying for the ISD call. That's what I call customer service."

Geoff lists the main benefits of his NC Rail plasma cutter as:

• Very high productivity - "It does the work of six men."
• Scrap has been cut by 50% thanks to the accuracy of operation and the efficiency of the nesting program in the software (ProfileMaster).
• Makes up for the shortage of skilled tradesmen. "Relatively unskilled people can master the basics of the system very quickly - a trainee can be doing take-offs by the end of his first day. And he won't break anything or waste anything while he's learning."
• A simple, reliable machine with back-up service just a phone call away.
• Very competitively priced.

To summarise:

“The NC Rail is the best thing since sliced bread "definitely my smartest buy in 16 years in business," says Geoff.

Cutting Intricate repetitive shapes:

PLASMA CUTTER SHAPES UP FOR CUTTING SHAPES

Parkside's Bruce McGlashan describes his NC Rail plasma cutter as "The only game in town."

Bruce McGlashan, production manager of Parkside Towbars, first saw the NC Rail plasma cutter in action at Perth industrial trade show, ToolBox, early in 2003, and was impressed with the speed and accuracy with which it cut complex shapes.

As Western Australia's leading manufacturer of tow-bars, bull-bars and roo-bars, Parkside cuts literally thousands of small, intricate components a year from sheet steel and aluminium.

Bruce saw the potential to speed production and to reduce the amount of cutting work subcontracted to local specialist firms.

"The next step was to check what else was available on the market, and it quickly became clear that NC Rail was the only game in town as far as our needs were concerned," he said.

"Make no mistake, this is not a sophisticated, high-tech machine. It’s a tough workhorse that comes at a budget price. One of the things that appealed to me is that most of the parts can be sourced right here in WA, and that's very important to us. In a high-volume business like ours, there’s no room in our workshop for equipment sitting idle waiting for parts or service," he said.

Following a short commissioning and training period supervised by Design Correlation's Chris Probert, Parkside's NC Rail started paying its way.

"We immediately started producing in-house some of the components we’d been subcontracting for plasma or laser cutting.

"This has led to some real economies, with the bonus of better quality control and important time saving.

"For example, one small component we subcontracted was a part for towbars for Holden Commodores, a very high volume item. With the plasma cutter we can set up 156 pieces on a 1200 x 600 steel sheet and nest the sheets accurately. We found we could knock off enough parts in five hours to last us for months, and that exercise alone is saving us around $5000 a year," he said.

Bruce said that, working with Chris Probert, he had been able to modify the NC Rail to better suit his needs, raising productivity considerably in the process.

"The machine is designed primarily to handle large sheet metal components, like air conditioning ducting. But it took very little time and effort to fine tune it to our needs, with some spectacular results.

For example, fine tuning the height control and careful selection of cutting speeds and consumables resulted in far greater cutting speed and consumable life. Even Chris was impressed by that!" he said.

Bruce found the computer interface user friendly and easy to pick up "I don't regard myself as highly computer literate, I don't even have a computer at home, but I came to grips with the software and produced my first NC component within 48 hours."

For Bruce and Parkside, the key benefits of NC Rail are:

• Speed - It's more than three times as fast as a profile cutter with twin heads, and clean-up time is minimal - we can take out components as the sheet is being cut, ready to assemble.
• Accuracy - We produce high numbers of intricate components and every one is an accurate replica. We can nest more accurately than on the profile cutter.
• Economy - We've eliminated a lot of expensive subcontract work, and the cutter is so accurate that we can fit small components in to fill up spots on a sheet, so in effect we're producing some of our components from scrap.
• Reliability - This is a tough workhorse of a machine, Australian made from local components.
• Cost - NC Rail cost us a lot less than anything else on the market, and has delivered on its promises. It will pay for itself in less than a year.

"We've been flat out meeting orders for the past six months, and without our NC Rail I estimate we'd be more than a month behind", says Bruce.

How quickly will YOUR NC Rail Plasma Cutter pay for itself?

PLASMA PROVES A GREAT INVESTMENT FOR HVAC

Large and complex components are a breeze for HVAC's plasma cutter.

HVAC/hps is a leading manufacturer of dust and noise pollution control equipment, and in 1993 was named by Business Review Weekly as one of the fastest-growing private companies in Australia.

At around the same time the company’s technical team decided to invest in a plasma cutter, and was reviewing the available options.

Although almost all the available machines were imported, HVAC gave the nod to an NC Plasma Cutter plasma cutter designed and built locally by WA firm Design Correlations.

hps, the environmental equipment wing of HVAC, had seen a number of benefits in opting for the Design Correlations package.

The company was new to plasma technology, so a prime concern was having training and service readily to hand.

It also noted that the Design Correlations cutter offered a substantial price advantage over imported machines offering comparable specifications.

However, perhaps the biggest single factor that swung the vote the way of Design Correlations was the fact that it was driven by a standard PC, not a custom-built on-board computer. This provided the flexibility to progressively update and upgrade the machine, to extend its useful life almost indefinitely.

An hps spokesman confirmed that things had worked out exactly according to plan.

Progressively over ten years hps had tweaked the control computer many times to increase speed and capacity, and had invested in additional software to provide greater design flexibility.

However, he said the basic machine was still churning out the components at the press of a button, and was probably the company's most important single piece of equipment.

The sheer simplicity of the cutter is shown by the speed with which an operator can adapt to computer controlled plasma technology.

Within weeks, a sheetmetal tradesman with no formal computer training is able to draw components on the computer, copy them to a floppy disc, take it to the cutter and carry out a complex series of cutting operations.

The process takes about one fifth of the time it would take for a tradesman to mark out patterns on the sheet and cut it with oxyacetylene gear, and eliminates a lot of manual handling.

The sheet is craned onto the cutter, the floppy disc is plugged in, and the operation commences immediately

The company did a quick sum recently when they had the job of making a 90 degree lobster-back bend 800mm in diameter, out of 6mm plate, with five full and two half segments.

The operator took less than an hour to draw the program, transfer it to the plasma cutter and complete all the cutting operations.

These were done to an accuracy of 1mm, and required no trimming.

Using hand-drawn patterns and an oxyacetylene cutter, it was estimated this would have occupied one tradesman for six hours.

Almost everything hps make in their Welshpool, WA shop has plasma-cut components, so it is easy to imagine how much time and trouble they have saved over the past 10 years, and what a sound investment the machine has proved to be.

Design Correlations
30 Newbey Street, Albany Western Australia
Ph: +61 8 9842 3644 :: Email: info@ncplasma.com.au

Copyright © 2009 Design Correlations
Last Updated November 17, 2009