Coil-fed laser tables - NOT the stuff of wizardry.
Here at Feed Lease, we’re big fans of the new coil-fed laser tables.
But all the hoopla surrounding them as
this new year of 2017 approaches has people believing they’re the greatest
thing conjured up since sliced bread.
Yeah sure, a coil-fed laser table
could cut through a loaf of bread. But the reality is, coil-fed laser tables
are not the love child creation of magical sorcery.
The coil-fed portion is the same…
They operate on the same technology that has existed on
traditional coil-fed stamping presses for
decades.
And that’s why we like them so much.
They’re like family. The newest addition to the family. Take a look at one and
you’ll see.
They resemble a traditional blanking
line, right down to the coil reels, precision straighteners and feed units. And
they run on consistent cycle times with automatic feed up. (They’re so darn
cute at this age.)
Nothing new or magical there.
The biggest advantage of these tables
is they allow for greater efficiency on low
volume production jobs. We can feed a continuous strip through the machine to
lessen sheet handling time and more effectively nest parts to get more out of a sheet.
All of this translates to FAR LESS waste.
It also means we increase production capability.
Ours settled right into the family
without so much as a fuss. And the benefits of coil
feeding your laser table for smaller production jobs are:
•
Lower cost per part
(no dies or die maintenance)
•
Optimized part
nesting resulting in less scrap
•
Ability to
immediately change part geometry vs. hard tooling die
•
Flexibility in
production, blanks or sheared parts
•
Quick change over
from part to part with the push of a button
What’s essentially happening is that we’re using the same
equipment we’ve always used, but just applying it to different applications.
As for the larger production jobs, we’re
leaving those to our stamping presses - our big boys. And we’re as proud of
them as ever.
