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Trends in Sawing

Sinking Teeth Into Sawing

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Sawing remains a go-to value-added service for many of North America’s metal distribution companies. 

There continues to be a number of advances in the sawing equipment metal service centers use, whether the saws themselves or the blades they run. This is being driven by several factors, including the desire for greater automation and the challenges companies face when sawing harder-to-cut materials. 

This comes at a time when the sawing and sawing equipment market is facing a number of challenges, according to Steve Yulga, director of sales and marketing for DoALL Sawing Products, a diversified company that produces sawing equipment, saw blades and cutting fluids and also services many band saw labels. 

He notes that for much of this year, given the high interest rates and uncertainties about economic trends – particularly prior to the U.S. election – there had been some hesitancy by certain service centers and other companies to make capital investments. But while companies have been holding off making final decisions, Yulga says that could change. “We are still fielding inquiries at a high rate.”

The service centers’ willingness to pull the trigger on making investments varies by company, says Rick Arcaro, vice president for sales and marketing for Hydmech USA, with some companies, concerned about the financing costs and how quickly they can pay off the investment, while others seeing it as an opportunity to become, or to continue to be, a market leader. 

“It is important for service centers to realize the return on investment with new sawing technologies,” says Rick Klipp, business development manager at Behringer Saws Inc., explaining that the combination of these technologies with automation, labor savings, scrap reduction, speed and efficiency provides companies with dramatic benefits. 

It isn’t surprising there has been a growing trend for sawing equipment to be more automated, says Stefan Dolipski, vice president of Kasto Inc., especially as it has been getting harder to find workers to load and unload the sawing equipment. Instead, they can let the machine do that automatically with the aid of robotics. 

“It isn’t that companies are looking to let people go,” Dolipski notes. “It is more that they are having trouble filling these positions in the first place,especially with skilled workers.”

Another driver of this automation is companies’ desire to be more competitive, explaining that each time workers touch the material it costs them money, so even though initially this automation has a cost associated with it, there is longer term saving to be had.

Also, Dolipski says, automation tends to be more efficient, noting that given that the equipment is always loaded, often service centers can usually do the same work that they previously did with six machines with only one. In addition, some of the equipment is not only able to do sawing, but also other processing services such as deburring, marking and shaping. 

Maxwell Harris, vice president of HE&M Saw, says that while the sawing industry has made inroads in becoming more automated, much of the automation equipment service centers use involves the loading and unloading of material and parts. 

He doesn’t believe the industry has gotten to the point where that sawing equipment that service centers use could be fully automated, given certain things that they do, including processing bundles, which, if containing non-uniform materials, have potential hangup points that could slow things down and even jam the equipment. 

Others have different views. For example, Dolipski says that while he estimates that currently only about 10 percent of U.S. service centers use automated and integrated sawing equipment, he expects that to grow to 30 to 45 percent of companies over the next 10 to 15 years. 

Behringer’s Klipp agrees the sawing industry is also increasingly embracing greater automation, recognizing its effect on cycle times, given the negative impact that the downtime between changing out material and the removal of parts could have. Because of that, companies can operate fewer saws if they have automated loading and unloading capabilities. 

Klipp says there have also been advances in human machine interface controllers, putting a lot more information at operators’ fingertips, helping them to choose the correct speed and feeds and blades for a particular size, shape and type of material without having to find charts for guidance. 

He notes that this helps to reduce operator errors. “Previously operators had to make more decisions themselves, but now through these controllers the saw itself advises the operator what to do – what settings are wise and which are not,” he explains.

This, HE&M Saw’s Harris, says, is because these new generation controllers use a “smart saw” platform made possible by outputting analytic data on the equipment via MTConnect, which is a machine tool protocol used on most computer numerical control equipment. 

Dolipski says that KASTO’s newly introduced KASTOsort tower, which is a combination of a saw with a robotic arm and a sort system, is an example of what companies are offering to provide greater automation of sawing equipment. Once this tower’s magazines are loaded with the material the company wants to cut, it can run 24 hours a day if desired, cutting the metal to length, doing all the processing that is needed to fill order and to sort the finished products in a way that the parts could be shipped to the end customer. 

There also has been a push to increase the automation of material handing equipment, including conveyor systems, Hydmech’s Arcaro says, explaining that with that automation, all the saw equipment operator needs to do is load a handful of material or bundles onto the automated conveyor system, pick a job to run and walk away and everything he needs will be ready on the outfeed side ready to unload.  

At the same time, service centers and other companies are increasingly looking to have more information about what their saw equipment is doing at all times, including how much downtime they are experiencing and what is causing it, Klipp says. Most manufacturers are addressing this by offering monitoring systems on their saws so the operators can optimize their processes. 

Harris says this is very important given his company has found that the band saws at service centers and machine shops that don’t track their equipment utilization are likely to be sitting idle about 70 percent of the time. Klipp, however, points out that just monitoring their sawing operation doesn’t necessarily improve it. “The company needs to make changes in its operations for that to happen.”

According to Klipp, one of the biggest changes in sawing equipment technology over the past few years is the introduction of ball-screw servo drives, which he says is a more precise and more powerful way to feed and cut rather than using hydraulics. 

He notes that while this technology has been used for machining centers for a while, its use is relatively new for sawing equipment, with Behringer leading that move with its introduction about seven years ago and others now following. 

Klipp says that this has been well received by customers who are looking for the efficiencies that it provides, including the ability to saw faster with more precision and repeatability and reduced scrap generation. “It also tightens length tolerances dramatically,” he says, adding that with more square and precision cutting, end users don’t have to do as much additional machining of the parts. 

In addition, Bobby Williams, North American sales manager for saws and hand tools for The L.S. Starrett points out that many gravity-fed machines have recently been replaced with horizontal machines that reduce the amount of vibration, resulting in better cuts. Also, he says more machines are worm-gear driven, resulting in more exact speeds and down pressure feed of the materials being cut. 

Also, Yulga notes that DoALL has recently introduced a few dual-column, dual-swivel machines to replace others with vertical-tilt frame technology for use in cutting structural steels, including tubing, channels, angles and beams. He says that given they use two columns for stability and rigidity and rotate horizontally on an axis, and that it uses gravity to bring the head down, it is believed that these machines will last longer and be able to hold better tolerances. 

“And since it is coupled with a Mitsubishi or Siemens control, the company can program multiple jobs and automate the process to limit the need for an operator to be present at all times,” Yulga says. 

At the same time, band saw blade producers are also constantly innovating, Hydmech’s Arcaro says, coming out with new blades, new technologies, new types of materials, different tooth geometries and backings of materials. This, he says, is coming amid a growing realization of a need for additional communication cooperation between the machine builders and the blade manufacturers. 

“It is about combining the whole package – the blade, the machine and the fluids,” Yulga says. “This ensures that service centers and other users have greater uptime, produce more and make more money.”

Charlie Starrett, L.S. Starrett Co. product manager for saws and hand tools, says there has recently been higher demand and greater acceptance of both carbide-tipped and high-performance bi-metal blades, especially in industries that use higher strength superalloys and high-nickel materials such as Inconel, Monel and Hastelloy. 

He says there have been advances in different tooth geometries to improve cutting speeds and finish quality as well as in new blade materials, adding that because of that, L.S. Starrett continues to be focused on product and process innovations that result in band saw blades that produce better surface finishes and faster cut times.

“We want to be laser-focused on our end customers,” Starrett says, including on solutions that drive higher productivity, lower cost per cut and that reduce total cost of ownership. 

Williams says the material being cut determines the blade that needs to be used, since certain higher strength, more gummy materials can be tough to cut. For those materials, customers are generally looking for better carbide and bi-metal blades, but there are also other factors that affect cutting performance, including the backing or the tensile strength of the backing of the blades. 

He points out that when cutting nickel alloys and stainless steels, it is critical that the blade is pulled through that material with every tooth engaged in the cut or else it will work harden and won’t be able to be cut at all. “For that we have an AMP grind, which is ground on the back of the blade, resulting in a wave-type cutting action, giving the blade the ability to pull a chip in a way that it doesn’t work harden,” he says. AMP grind blades are designed specific to the type and the diameter of the material being cut. 

Harder-to-cut materials such as nickel alloys are tougher on blade life and the blade teeth, which is why different types of tooth configurations and designs are offered. For example, L.S. Starrett’s Advanz MC7 blade has a unique, progressive four-tooth design that produces seven chips when cutting the material, which helps to reduce chip loading in the blade gullets. 

Starrett also points out the blades used could vary by company.  For example, metal service centers that cut a lot of different types of material are more likely to use a versatile blade, such as Starrett’s Intenss Pro bi-metal blade, which reduces the need to change out their blades unless they are sawing exceptionally hard-to-cut materials. Still, broadly speaking there has also been greater market acceptance of carbide-tipped blades as they can result in an up to 50 percent improvement in total cost of ownership, he says.

Starrett noted that blade manufacturers are constantly investing in research and development, testing new blades that have different tooth designs for different material composition. “Both sawing equipment and the blades that are used will continue to evolve,” he said. 

“I believe that the sawing market will be strong for years to come helped by continuing technological advancements, Klipp says. 

Harris believes at least part of that will be driven by more and more movement toward connected factories with each machine being connected to data models that not only understand what the machines are doing but provide predictive analytics to know when the machine or blade is going to fail, when maintenance must occur and how to keep sawing machines and blades operational longer.
 
It is generally believed that thanks to the willingness to invest in research and development work, both sawing equipment and the blades that they use will continue to evolve.

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Saws and their blades will continue to evolve. (Photo courtesy The L.S. Starrett Co.)