Automation Hydrocut Machine
Keywords: Waterjet, Cutting, Aerospace industry
Haynes International, developer and producer of high performance alloys, has taken delivery of an ESAB Automation Hydrocut waterjet cutting machine –thought to be the largest in the UK. It has been introduced to cut the company's vast range of exotic materials, and also allows the company to offer a sub-contract cutting service to the aerospace chemical processing industry(Plate 1).
Plate 1 ESAB's watejet cutting solution for Haynes International
Based in Openshaw, Manchester, the UK division of Haynes International, whose headquarters are in Kokomo, USA, makes High Temperature Alloys (HTA), primarily for use in the aerospace industry, and Corrosion Resistant Alloys (CRA), for use throughout the chemical processing industry.
The ESAB Hydrocut Low-Rail waterjet cutting system supplied to Haynes has two cutting heads and a bed size of 8 metres x 4 metres. The auto-height control feature for the cutting heads reportedly ensures that the correct focal length for optimum Performance is maintained, even over large, uneven sheet material.
Machine control is provided by a Vision PC windows based cutting machine controller. The easy to use, powerful CNC claims many features, including menu driven operation, real-time tool path display, and kerf-override to increase productivity.
Materials up to 100 mm thick and down to 0.4mm are cut on the new machine. In addition to cutting its own alloys, Haynes are now also able to offer a sub-contract cutting service – mainly for the aerospace chemical processing industry, using the Hydrocut for profiling Haynes materials along with titanium and stainless steel.
For stress analysis work on its own materials, Haynes uses the novel cutting capabilities of the waterjet system to cut test pieces for analysis. This includes cutting billets up to 100mm thick through the centre – an operation that previously took a day to accomplish by sawing is now performed in one hour. Waterjet also gives a narrow heat affected zone compared to conventional thermal cutting.
Details available from: ESAB Automation Limited. Tel: +44 (0)1264 332233;Fax: +44 (0)1264 332074; Website: http://www.esab.co.uk
