LASER JOB SHOPS
NO JOB TOO BIG
Laser job shops fulfil a very specific niche in manufacturing and, as Greg Blackman finds out, business is booming for these facilities in the UK
C
utting, welding, drilling, the laser job shop fulfils what on the surface are the basics of manufacturing. If you want
1,000 shelf brackets cut or parts for automobiles welded, then a laser job shop will deliver the sections as specified. But there is a lot more to running a laser job shop successfully than it would at first appear. ‘Te market is very competitive,’
said Dean Cockayne, operations director at Midtherm Laser and chairman of the Association of Laser Users’ (AILU) Job Shop special interest group. ‘You’ve got to have new technology and you’ve got to invest all the time to keep on top of that. You’ve also got to be proactive and chase the orders.’ Midtherm, based in Dudley in the
West Midlands, UK, has been in business for 11 years. It runs five laser cutting machines, and, apart from some folding, the company deals almost exclusively with laser cutting. ‘Some of my competitors cut, fold, drill, weld, and maybe even paint,’ said Cockayne. ‘You get businesses that are etching or marking with lasers, some that cut flat parts, and some that cut 3D parts – I split them into several categories and my competition is those that cut flat parts. ‘People are making money out of
laser cutting, but they’ve invested a vast amount of money to get that return,’ he added. Midtherm’s laser cutting machines are all in excess of half a million pounds each, and only
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three of them can fit in one of the company’s buildings. And it’s not just a case of buying the equipment; there’s a lot of expertise that goes into running a job shop. Even manufacturers buying their own laser systems and selling some of the spare laser cutting capacity, can struggle with turning a profit. ‘It doesn’t always work like that. Tey [manufacturers] might buy an over-the-top machine and find they can only get their own work for it,’ commented Cockayne. Te competition is largely from
other job shops providing similar services, according to Dr John Powell, technical director at Laser Expertise, a subcontract laser processing company based in Nottingham, UK. ‘Laser cutting is such a big industry now that you either use laser cutting or you don’t. We don’t compete with anything else really,’ he said. Plasma cutters and flame cutters have a completely different field and water jet cutting is used when laser cutting isn’t suitable. Punching is faster with simple part geometries from thin sections, but lasers are better at cutting complicated profiles. With this in mind, it is common
practice for the customer to send the same job specifications to a number of subcontractors, and copy them all in on the e-mail. ‘Tey don’t hide the fact,’ commented Powell. ‘So you
LASER SYSTEMS EUROPE ISSUE 23 • SUMMER 2014
know who you’re up against and it’s a matter of lowest price, fastest delivery.’ Delivery is usually required within
three or four days, according to Powell. And the following month job shops go through exactly the same process, because the other subcontractors might be short of work that month and give a cheaper price. Laser Expertise, contrary to
extremely quick and have much lower maintenance costs and lower electricity costs
Fibre lasers are
Midtherm’s strategy, does offer fabrication services. It will not only cut flat box plates, but also bend them into shape, weld them, finish them and paint them. For example, the company makes rubbish bins, sending them out complete, welded and painted, with the corporation logo on. Powell commented: ‘If you are doing that for a customer, they won’t send it out to five different suppliers every week, they’ll keep
coming back to you. Fabrication not only adds value to what’s being produced, but it keeps the customers loyal.’ Te work at Laser Expertise ranges
from more standard cutting jobs to producing highly complex parts. On the day I spoke to Powell, he ran through the day’s work: ‘Earlier this morning we were cutting shelf
brackets for shops. You produce a lorry load of the parts in the morning. It’s all mild steel. Later on today we’re going to be cutting some decorative panels for an architect out of stainless steel, which will take two hours each. At the end of the day, two people could pick up the entire aſternoon’s production, but because it takes so long to do, it costs a lot more. Te jobs can vary quite a lot in terms of throughput.’ Laser Expertise runs three CO2
lasers and has recently invested in a fibre laser. Fibre lasers are more efficient and faster at cutting thin metals, which makes them an attractive proposition for materials processing, but Powell is treating the technology as supplementary to the company’s existing CO2 ‘Te CO2
systems. laser is a better general
workhorse,’ he said, ‘but if you’ve got two CO2
machines the third machine
should be a fibre system.’ Cockayne agrees: ‘Fibre lasers can’t do some of the jobs, but as a second or third option it is well worth having one. Tey are cheaper to run, more reliable, and they cut faster on thinner material.’ Te fibre laser’s speed of processing
thinner materials means that, when cutting a lot of metal, all the thin sheets can be given to the fibre laser, for instance. Tom Mongan at Subcon
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