When Coosa Steel Corp. was founded in 1972, laser cutting technology was still about a decade away from reaching production-level efficiency and any sort of mainstream implementation. Rather, the go-to choice for processing metal was sawing technology. Today, thanks to metal cutting technologies from BLM GROUP, Coosa Steel is taking advantage of sawing and laser cutting systems, finding that balance between old school sawing tech with modern upgrades and advanced laser systems for more complex cuts.
Based in Rome, Ga., Coosa is an established and reliable supplier of structural steel, metal components and custom fabrication solutions. The company has remained competitive for more than half a century, partially by embracing technology that enhances efficiency and aids in meeting customer demands.
In the early years, Coosa was a steel service center offering “basic as it gets processing,” says Andrew Saville, president. When his father bought Coosa in 1985, not a lot had changed – they were still “sticking to the basics.” But in 1989, one of the company’s main customers began building collapsible, portable racks for automobile tires. The old wooden pallet racks were giving way to custom racks made from metal, and major tire producers, including Goodyear, Bridgestone and Firestone, were building new plants and needed hundreds of thousands of tire racks, which put Coosa’s services in high demand.
“We were going three shifts a day, seven days a week building tire racks as fast as we could go,” Saville says. “That really gave us a boost in the racks division and kind of created a whole other company within Coosa.”
Finding a solution
Coosa’s competitive edge is the speed of delivery for processed items – not just for the racks division but companywide. When a customer needs specific products, Coosa does not adhere to the six- to 10-week lead times that larger steel service centers are known to offer. Instead, the company’s niche, according to Saville, is “that quick turnaround.”
“We’re very nimble,” he says. “If we have a big customer call and say, ‘I need these parts tomorrow,’ well, we’re your guy. We’ll make it happen.”
Michael Adelman, regional sales manager for BLM GROUP USA, has worked with Coosa on metal cutting solutions and knows the operation well. He adds that while the company is not a massive steel service center compared to its competitors, “what they lack in size, they make for in agility. They can get it done in a week instead of 10 or 12 weeks out.”
Tanner Mehrkens, chief engineer at Coosa, adds that the feedback he has heard from customers is that his company produces products that are “more accurate than what they receive from our competitors. I guess they have so much going through [their production facility] that they aren’t paying attention to whether it’s cut correctly. As a smaller company, we’re able to keep an eye on everything.”
An eye for detail is important, but so too are the systems used to make accurate cuts. But when the tire rack division first started ramping up, Coosa’s sawing systems were lacking. Saville says they were utilizing bandsaws that couldn’t hold the required tolerances and were too slow.
“We were taking too much time and losing money trying to cut the material in-house,” he says.
The search was on for a more efficient cutting system. Saville went to BLM and said, “what types of saws do you guys have?” Considering Coosa’s needs, BLM recommended the TS-72, an advanced automatic tube sawing machine designed for high speed and high precision in cutting round, square and rectangular tube profiles, as well as solid bars. Operators are not bogged down with extensive setup time with this machine, and they can also count on exceptional repeatability, which is the one-two punch of speed and reliability manufacturers demand.
Saville looked at saws from other manufacturers, but he was already familiar with BLM’s service abilities, as they had implemented BLM’s LT7 tube laser system, and he knew that when he needed maintenance services, he would be in good hands.
“When I’m purchasing equipment,” he says, “I look at it and say – ‘can it help the entire company?’”
The answer in this case was “yes.” The TS-72 would get them out of the weeds with the tire rack orders, and they could also use the tube saw for the company’s pipe support division and the various jobs generated through the service center.
Despite the highly technical design of the fully automated sawing system, usability is incredibly simple. BLM’s intuitive control software, as well as the user-friendly interface, require minimal training and offer ease of operation, regardless of the complexity of a cut list. Furthermore, this cold saw is built for cutting through mild and stainless steel, aluminum and copper alloys, allowing for plenty of flexibility.
Laser before saw?
It is not uncommon for steel service centers, or even metal fabrication shops, to graduate from various saws – be it a bandsaw, cold saw or chop saw – to more advanced machines, including highly automated sawing systems, and then move up another massive step to tube lasers. Cutting is usually the first step in a value-added process, and the saw, a relatively low cost and easy piece of equipment to operate, is often the go-to solution. And while Coosa had its share of saws, the graduation process was a little different from the norm.
“Andrew is unique,” Adelman says. “He got the tube laser first and then added the (automated) saw afterward.”
Coosa brought in the TS-72 about two years ago, roughly two years after implementing the tube laser. Again, the catalyst for the laser implementation was the tire rack market. Coosa was quickly discovering that the semi-automatic drill line they had installed to put holes in the rack parts was slowing them down. An order that took three months to drill now only took two days with the tube laser.
Saw and laser symbiosis
Despite the vast differences in the technologies involved in sawing and laser cutting systems, there is an ongoing saw-versus-laser debate. Any fabricator with a large enough budget might say, “why buy a saw when you can buy a tube laser?” This is something Adelman has encountered time and again, and he is definitely a proponent of his company’s laser lines, but he says Coosa is a great example of how sawing and laser cutting technologies combine to add greater value.
“If you didn’t have the saw,” he says chidingly to Saville, “just how jammed up would the LT7 be – you’d need two or three more of those, right?”
There are also practicalities to consider, as using a high-dollar laser system to make straight cuts would be fiscally unreasonable compared to the cost per cut a sawing system could manage. Furthermore, there is an argument to made that the saw can do the job faster and with cleaner outcomes.
Jon Todd, group marketing and public relations manager with BLM GROUP USA, says job shops considering the end purpose of their products will ascertain without much deliberation that there is a need for sawing and laser technology. While speed is important (lasers), a product without burrs and free of contamination (saws) is equally as important.
“Take the food and beverage market, for example,” he says. “If you’re producing something that is sensitive to contaminants in the tube, you need it to be free from any kind of burr or spatter. So, while our ‘spoon’ technology for tube lasers can cater to that over a range of tube diameters, the deburring that comes along with cold saws is a much more versatile solution.”
Saville echoes Todd on the clean cutting abilities of the cold saw, but something he said the BLM model can do that others could not was to match the production rates.
“The speed was night and day over what a lot of the other ones were doing,” he says, adding that the speed of the material feed mechanism did not devalue the accuracy of the material once it was in the position to be cut.
“Your downtime is between cuts,” Saville says of how a fabricator is only making money when cuts are being made. “I mean, sometimes you can’t even measure how fast – it’s maybe a second or 0.3 sec. between cuts. If you’re spending more time feeding than cutting, you’re losing. And that was one of the big pluses with the TS-72 over some of the other saws.”
