In 1891, the Swiss Army was equipped with a new pocketknife, one that was outfitted with a blade, reamer, can opener and screwdriver. Ever since, marketers and product promoters have touted their multi-purpose goods as “the Swiss Army knife” of XYZ.
New smartphones have been described that way, and the same goes for a slew of kitchen gadgets, exercise equipment and, of course, cargo pants. You know things have gotten out of control when a project manager is described as the Swiss Army knife of “our digital transformation goals.” The multi-tool’s inventor is probably turning in his grave.
Some products, however, do live up to the comparison. In metal fabricating, a modern punch press machine is the obvious Swiss Army knife of the shop floor. It can tap, blank, countersink, deburr, shear, and create holes and louvers. Some can even do bending and forming operations. When combined with a laser cutter, the number of functions that can be performed grows even higher.
Historically, when companies bought punch/laser combination equipment it was based in part on their available floor space – or lack thereof – where theoretically, they could have two machines in the floor space of one. Moving forward, fabricators will still invest in a punch/laser combo machine because of limited floor space, but Tom Weir, punch press product sales manager at LVD North America, says that today’s models have even more to offer.
Advanced automation
In terms of offering more, LVD’s punch/laser combo machines are replete with automation options. In the face of persistent labor shortages, these advancements are critical for future industry needs.
“The older machines didn’t have many automation options, but LVD’s new machine can accommodate various types,” Weir says. “As an example, we have a customer that recently invested in a punch/laser combo machine with a compact tower warehouse. They load material in, process the parts and palletize them with little human intervention.”
All around the country, fabricators are looking for ways to increase their productivity and many are doing so by running lights out or adding overnight shifts. But what happens the next day when the morning shift has to sort through all of those parts?
“The goal at LVD is to give users multiple ways to pick and sort parts in real time as they’re running off the machine,” Weir says. “We have a drop door on the machine that allows users to evacuate the parts after they’re cut. Users can evacuate parts out of the drop door to come out onto a conveyor or into a bin sort system. Parts can also be evacuated onto a pallet underneath the table. There are a lot of options.”
Some customers have put a conveyor underneath their drop door to eject parts onto a sorting table nearby. And Weir envisions parts that need to be bent being sent via a conveyor straight to a press brake to further streamline operations. The possibilities are as vast as customers’ needs.
Take LVD’s flexible automation system as another example. While not necessarily a robot in the traditional sense, the system is able to reduce the tedious manual labor typically associated with part sorting.
“This automation system features a custom-designed gantry with a vacuum bridge that moves in parallel with the X-axis on the machine,” Weir explains. “It’s able to pick a part right off the sheet – like a robot would – and place it on a pallet, which is great for parts that are too big to go through the drop door.
“When you run lights-out, your parts can be sorted and palletized,” he says. “All you have left is your skeleton to scrap. That way, the morning shift can hit the ground running instead of spending their time sorting and stacking all of the parts that were produced overnight.”
Purchase pretext
Overall, Weir is happy to see how creative customers can be with LVD’s automation options. While the workforce shortage has been a constant thorn in the industry’s side, it has opened fabricators’ minds in terms of how to be more efficient.
“In my opinion, almost every job shop could use a punch/laser combo machine because of the flexibility it provides,” Weir says. “With a traditional punch press, you need to buy tooling for every shape, or you have to nibble it out, which can be very costly. A punch/laser combo machine allows you to use the laser to handle a variety of shapes and contours. The beauty of such a machine – beyond the automation – is that it offers the flexibility of not having to buy as much tooling. This can provide a significant cost savings especially with a smaller batch of parts.
“If you have to do just one or two features on a part, you can laser cut what you don’t have that custom tool for,” he explains. “If your customer requires you to punch a lot of holes or produce a part that requires forming, like louvers or electrical knockouts, you can invest in those tools and laser cut the rest. The laser also allows you to cut features of a part that would normally be too small to punch out, such as bend reliefs on a corner.”
Many punch/laser users laser cut the perimeters of their parts, which is often preferable considering many customers need to have smooth edges on their parts for safety or cosmetic reasons. In these cases, the punch press performs the internal part features and then the laser cuts the perimeter. When it comes to round perimeters or perimeters with curves, this is especially helpful as a standalone punch press machine would have to nibble along those arcs.
And, of course, a combo machine’s laser can be used as a standalone process for cutting all sorts of intricate shapes and parts. LVD’s combo machines can handle standard sheet sizes of 5 ft. by 10 ft. (longer parts can be handled using a sheet repositioner), and, like the company’s other metal fabricating equipment, the machine controls are intuitive and user friendly.
Fiber factor
Another advantage to modern punch/laser combo machines is the introduction of fiber technology. The original punch/laser machine ran with a CO2 laser, which relies on mirrors to focus the beam. When paired with a punch press machine’s vibrations, maintenance requirements were high.
With fiber technology, however, energy is transferred right to the head through a fiber optic cable, which is not affected by the vibration from the machine. Additionally, like all equipment running with fiber technology, energy savings are inherent.
“I travel a lot for my job, and I go into plenty of shops that are still running CO2 lasers,” Weir says. “Some people just haven’t made the jump yet, so we need to keep reminding them of fiber’s benefits when they start looking at new machinery.
“There are so many fabricators, though, that haven’t started looking at fiber because their CO2 lasers are still running,” he adds. “It’s a hard thing for them to just stop running a machine to buy a new one when the old one is still making them parts.”
Beyond the reductions of maintenance and energy usage, fiber technology also inspired a hybrid approach to the design of LVD’s new punch/laser combo machines. According to Weir, the older punch/ CO2 laser combo model was a “sheet dragger,” meaning there was an offset on the cutting head between the punching operations and laser cutting. This required the sheet to be moved in every direction to complete a part.
“Older punch press machines moved the sheet in both X- and Y-axes directions for punching and laser cutting,” Weir explains. “This limits speeds because you have to move both the weight of the machine and the sheet while moving the workpiece. Modern combo machine designs move the sheet in both X- and Y-axes for punching. However, for laser cutting, the sheet only moves in the X-axis, not in the Y-axis.
“This improves machine dynamics to allow for faster cutting speeds because you’re moving fewer of the machine components during the production process,” he adds. “This allows us to really take advantage of some of the speeds of fiber technology.”
Interestingly, the way in which sheet is processed on a punch/laser combo machine is why the equipment is only offered in power levels up to 4 kW. Anything above 4 kW could be considered overkill because, even with the hybrid design, the sheet can only be moved so fast. Regardless, the fiber laser still achieves incredibly fast cutting speeds – speeds that most human laborers can’t keep up with, but the machine’s various automation features can.
