Perth-based company Ox Engineering has recently purchased a CNC plasma cutting machine to bring its plate cutting in-house.
Ox Engineering manager Heath Oxley said he went in search of a machine that could use the company's drawings with minimal fuss.
"It had to provide tight tolerances and accuracy, the cutting edge needed to be precise and the build quality of the machine needed to be high; and of course, meet our budget,” he said.
Ox Engineering supplies custom-designed products to suit the different types of drill rigs used in exploration.
"Drill rigs are put through their paces, requiring many spare parts, rebuilds or retrofits to keep them commissioned,” Oxley said.
"In order to manufacture these parts, designs are generated using 3D CAD software and then outsourced to specialist companies for cutting.
"The problem is that lead times were blowing out to three or four weeks, making business untenable. This is why we had to bring plate cutting in-house.”
Oxley narrowed his search down to three possibilities: one built in Australia with many imported, cheaper components; one that was completely Australian owned and made, and the HACO model.
"All three had the high-definition (Hypertherm's patented HyDefinition technology) plasma cutter we wanted, the same power source and comparable software capabilities,” he said.
In the end, Oxley went with a KOMPAKT 4020 CNC plasma cutting machine from HACO Australia.
The KOMPAKT 4020 boasts a cutting table of 4000mm x 2000mm and a positioning accuracy of ± 0.1mm and Hypertherm's patented HyDefinition plasma cutting system.
The machine is more than capable of cutting materials of up to 32mm of mild steel and happily copes with stainless and tempered high-tensile steel.
To ensure optimum cutting accuracy and speed, the gantry of the KOMPAKT rests on over-sized linear guides and is driven on both sides by brushless AC servo motors and rack-and-pinion systems.
Two over-sized linear guides are mounted on the gantry itself for accurate Y-movement of the cutting head rest.
The X-axis is also controlled by a brushless AC servo motor with rack-and-pinion system.
The touch screen control panel is intuitive and allowed the team at Ox Engineering straightforward control of the cutter with minimal training.
It also provides the user with information on consumable lifecycles to minimise wastage and downtime.
"Instead of waiting four weeks, turnaround time has been cut to a tenth of what it was,” Oxley said.
"Once the drawing is complete, it can be cut in an hour.”