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Lifting Motivation with new plasma system |
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 by Jerry Cook
When you’re a custom manufacturer of industrial lifting equipment such as Stoney Creek, ON-based Motivation Industrial Equipment Ltd., flexibility is critical in responding as quickly as possible to the constantly changing requirements of your customer base.
That was the major impetus behind the firm’s decision to install a new ESAB Sabre SXE gantry cutting machine.
“The reason we bought this machine is that the Sabre’s plasma system is
more flexible than the older ESAB plasma cutting machine that we
previously had. The older machine was also not as stable as the new
plasma cutting system and it didn’t give us as good a finished cut,”
says Michael Slater, president of Motivation.
The company, which began operations in 1966, is a custom manufacturer
of industrial lifting equipment for customers in various markets
including forestry, mining, railway sector, food industry, and many
more.
The firm, which has 18 employees at its 15,600 sq. ft. facility, is
typically working with higher grade steels. The firm’s sales are
approximately 75%-25% domestic versus export respectively.
Motivation designs and build a wide variety of custom lifting equipment
including cranes, hoists, gantries, jib cranes, work station bridge
cranes, lifting beams, articulating jib cranes and much more. As well,
the company manufactures its own proprietary lifting product-the MRS
Series enclosed track crane system. The firm also supplies a wide range
of lifting accessory products such as vacuum lifters and drum handling
equipment.
The company had also introduced other initiatives to its operation to
further enhance flexibility including a new engineering program which
was being used with the older plasma cutting system.
“We have put in a number of things including an automatic engineering
program which we wrote and that led us to the need for a flexible
cutting system such as the Sabre to enable us to respond quickly to our
customers’ requirements,” says Slater.
According to Slater, the ESAB plasma system and the engineering program
complement each other. “If we didn’t have the engineering program there
would be less of a justification for the machine and if we didn’t have
the machine there would be less of a justification for the engineering
program.”
Continues Slater, “A customer will contact us with an enquiry for a
given piece of equipment. We will then run that piece of equipment on
the engineering software program and it will give me an accurate bill
of materials and cost.
“It will be able to give me drawings of all of the components that will
go into building the piece of equipment. The drawings can then be
downloaded directly to the plasma machine and the components can begin
being cut within hours of receiving the order. The plasma system works
hand-in-hand with the engineering program,” says Slater.
The Sabre SXE, which was supplied by ESAB Welding & Cutting
Products, Mississauga, ON (esab.com) is a high-speed, medium gantry
shape cutting machine which offers both plasma cutting and oxy-fuel
cutting. The machine is built around a reinforced main beam featuring
high stiffness and through-hardened and ground guideways that provide
high accuracy. The machine is capable of cutting both underwater and
above water.
The system is equipped with an advanced drive system using digital AC
drives with brushless motors and an oversized gearbox designed
specifically for ESAB cutting machines. The Sabre SXE offers a
positioning accuracy of plus or minus .010 in. and repeatability of
plus or minus .003 in.
The Sabre SXE can be equipped with standard plasma cutting stations
featuring the PT-35, PT-20AMX, PT-36, or PT-15XL torch. These systems
can be configured for air plasma up to 100 amps, oxygen plasma up to
100 amps, or nitrogen or Argon-hydrogen plasma up to 600 amps.
Motivation’s machine features a 200 amp plasma cutting torch capable of
cutting up to 1 1/4 in. thick material. The machine can also be
equipped with up to six oxy-fuel cutting stations.
The Sabre SXE has brought a number of benefits to Motivation’s
operations, says Slater. “Our older ESAB plasma system was only 100
amps and could only cut up to 5/8 in. material. However, the vast
majority of the material that we are cutting is from 1/2 in. up to 1
1/4 in. thick. As a result, I was missing the opportunity to cut some
of the thicker materials.
“Now, we typically cut up to one in. thick material with the new plasma
and use the oxy-fuel for cutting material above one in. thick. The
plasma is about 20 to 30 times faster than the oxy-fuel system on the
Sabre machine,” he says.
As well, Slater points out that previously using the older ESAB plasma
system to cut thicker materials was slow and didn’t provide the
required accuracy. “Previously, we used the oxy-fuel process to cut
thicker materials which was time consuming and also required a lot of
grinding and finishing work.
“The new plasma machine provides a cleaner, more precise cut which
requires less work afterwards as far as grinding, deburring, and
finishing. The Sabre SXE also provides better repeatability in terms of
fit and form. The machine has also provided us with improved
productivity and shorter lead times for customers for custom-engineered
products,” Slater states.
Ease of operation is another benefit of the new ESAB Sabre SXE system,
he adds.”The new plasma system is capable of being programmed without
having to change a lot of the consumables, or nozzles and tips to
accommodate different thicknesses of material, or drawing different
amperages, and applying different cutting speeds.
“The control on the machine is actually looking at what the material
thickness is and then automatically selecting the appropriate gases,
gas pressures, gas mixes, amperages, and speeds automatically (for the
material being cut). With the new machine, I wanted to take more of the
control of the operation away from the operator such as setting gases
and other parameters,” explains Slater.
The Sabre SXE also provides Motivation with the capability to do
etching and marking, he notes. “Using the same plasma torch that we use
to cut through one in. material, we can also use to mark hole centers,
bending lines, and any other geometry that we want to put on the
surface of the material.”
While Slater did consider other plasma cutting systems on the market,
his previous positive experience with ESAB’s plasma cutting equipment
prompted him to select another ESAB machine.
“I was happy with the first ESAB plasma cutting system that we had and
I’ve had other experience with ESAB cutting equipment in the past. I’ve
always been happy with the support that we’ve got from ESAB. I was also
intrigued about having a plasma machine with the very latest control
that ESAB offers,” he says.
Adds Slater, “Another advantage that you have with ESAB equipment is
that ESAB is responsible for all of the components on the system.
Whether it is the CAD system, the machine itself, the plasma or
oxy-fuel system, or any of the valves or other components that are
on-board the machine, it is entirely ESAB’s responsibility.”
The new plasma cutting system is also opening new opportunities for
business for the company, says Slater. “We started to do a little
subcontracting work on the machine. We aren’t really pursuing
subcontract work for the plasma system right now because we are very
busy. However, if we got to the point that we weren’t so busy, we now
have that opportunity with the new plasma system,” says Slater.
Because of Motivation’s previous experience using an ESAB plasma
system, training on the new machine was relatively straightforward, he
says.
The ESAB Sabre SXE plasma system is definitely meeting expectations in terms of performance, says Slater.
esab.com
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