Consolidated Metals, a supplier of mechanical and light structural tubing, spent the past year running material through an automated cold saw and deburring system. Making the switch from a nick and shear system to a TS72 sawing system from BLM GROUP has changed the way the company competes for business.
The family-owned company, now based in Elkhart, Ind., produces tubing used in fencing, ladders, recreational vehicles, buses, trailers and much more. Roughly 60 percent of the company’s customers are within two hours of Elkhart, but it has loyal customers extending to Texas, Montana and Idaho.
Silvia Hansell, co-owner and CEO of Consolidated Metals, says customer expectations are a useful barometer for the broader tubing market.
“What we’re seeing across the board is that everybody’s trying to raise their game,” she says. “It’s incredibly competitive in tubing in particular. More and more companies are getting into that space. As a response to that, everyone is trying to improve their quality.”
For Hansell’s company, improving quality meant, in part, implementing a more modern sawing system.
Onboarding new tech
Nick and shear machines served the company well for many years – Hansell’s father founded Consolidated Metals 28 years ago. But Hansell researched more modern sawing solutions, finding they were faster and could produce better-quality finishes. With customers holding higher expectations, including higher cut quality and greater consistency, it was time to look for a replacement.
“We often had quality issues,” Hansell says of the older sawing technology. “The end cut was simply not as versatile as it needed to be. It wasn’t high quality and, therefore, we couldn’t use it for many of our newer customers.”
BLM GROUP USA was the company that came to Hansell’s mind for the new equipment because of its reputation for producing cold saws capable of excellent accuracy and cut quality. The capabilities of the TS72 automated cold saw made it an easy choice for Consolidated Metals. The company placed its order around a year ago, and the results have matched expectations.
The TS72 can cut up to four different part lengths from a single tube in one pass using a motorized locator that travels along the feed line to intercept each programmed length. One of the perks of implementing a fully automated solution like this is that it does not require an operator to plan the cutting sequence because the machine calculates its own part arrangement to get the most usable length out of each tube.
The saw cuts round, square, rectangular and flat-oval profiles without swapping in dedicated tooling. A pair of hydraulic clamps positioned on either side of the saw blade, each operating independently with adjustable pressure, holds the workpiece firmly in place, thereby improving cut accuracy.
“Moving to a cold saw with a reputable manufacturer has definitely elevated our game,” Hansell says.
Speed and consistency
Chris Hawkins, plant manager at Consolidated Metals, says the TS72 has provided a substantial increase in speed – up to three times the productivity of the company’s previous technology, depending on the material and application.
“We’re producing more parts per shift and have improved throughput,” he says.
But the value of the saw is not just about cutting faster. In a high-mix tube environment, changeover, consistency and handling can have as much impact as raw cutting speed. Consolidated Metals serves customers with disparate needs, many with specific packaging requirements. The saw has to support frequent changes and a range of tube profiles without turning every job into a setup-heavy process.
The time required to change from square tube to round tube could create a bottleneck with the previous cutting equipment, but the TS72 handles the transition automatically, which is something Tim Bolle, maintenance manager at Consolidated Metals, appreciates.
“The changeover speed going from square to round is so much faster,” he says. “The consistency in the cut from this saw compared to our bandsaw or even the nick and shear is a huge advantage.”
The sawing system also requires less floor space. Hansell says the company’s former sawing solution, combined with a separate deburring station, occupied roughly twice as much space as the TS72 configuration. That smaller footprint provides more room to stock material for larger customers, which is an increasingly important advantage as the company grows.
The saw is also a connected production system that can give manufacturers real-time visibility into cycle times, completed part counts, work order progress, productivity and material use throughout a shift. Remote batch scheduling and monitoring are also part of the package.
“Having it track that cycle time really helps us develop our capacity planning and manpower requirements,” Hawkins says.
Deburring and safety
Cold saws are known for quick, clean cuts, but when tight tolerances call for edges with zero burrs, a secondary solution is required, so Consolidated Metals chose the dedicated deburring machine from BLM GROUP. It is an important part of the story for the company because it changes what happens after the cut.
Prior to implementing the TS72 and deburring machine, removing burrs from the tubing was a secondary process requiring multiple steps. Parts were packed and moved to a secondary work center, taken out and manually cleaned and deburred. Hansell says it took up too much space and “just really wasn’t efficient.”
Hawkins agrees, adding that the new process has “eliminated a lot of waste. Also, a lot of the parts we make have a mating part that either slides into another tube or over one, so the deburring on the inside and outside has been great.”
Victor Wooster, technical sales specialist at BLM GROUP, says ease of operation is built into the deburring machine, as it is connected to and controlled through the TS72 interface, giving the operator one interface for cutting and deburring.
“The newest addition to it is a dust collector that adds more suction,” he says. “It has shrouds that collect more of the dust to make it safer for the operators – a cleaner work environment where more of the dust and chips are collected.”
Hawkins says the new setup includes deburring brushes that are enclosed.
“There’s also a light curtain,” he says, “so the operator can’t even get close to the deburring machine or to the parts while they’re being moved.”
Training and support
BLM GROUP’s involvement extends beyond equipment installation and handoff. Bolle notes technicians stayed on-site until the Consolidated Metals team was proficient with the new system.
“I believe they were here almost two weeks,” he says, “teaching us everything about how to use it, how to clear fault codes. Then, the technical support afterward – being able to call in if we were stumped by something – was extremely helpful and a great service, including the on-call availability.”
From an operator standpoint, the saw’s control interface is easy to use. Hawkins cites a recent personal experience: The operator had left for the day, and he needed to cut a different tube size.
“Having never had any interaction with the interface,” he says, “I think it took me about 3 min. to step right through it and make the change to the cut length. A few minutes later, I had a sample part I needed and I’m not the most technical person.”
BLM GROUP technicians also returned for a follow-up visit after the operator had time to run the equipment independently.
“It was a perfect opportunity to ask questions about how to maximize our performance with the machine,” Bolle says.
Ultimately, the payoff from the new sawing solution, aside from speed, is in its combination of improved cut quality, greater consistency and integrated deburring. This allows Consolidated Metals to pursue work that is not well-suited to its old nick and shear equipment. At the same time, the additional throughput provides the company the capacity to serve more customers and take on more orders.
“We’ll be able to go out to more customers that need better quality that we weren’t able to provide before,” Hansell says. “We can run faster, so we can run more and take on additional work.”
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