Reduce operating expenses, increase profit, eliminate secondary work, cut down on material handling, and bring outsourced work back in house. It sounds like a daunting “to-do” list for any plant manager, except in Ontario, Canada where one company put a check mark by all of the above in less than a year. Operating expenses decreased by $100,000 for 2013. Profit per assembly increased $500. In addition, AWC Manufacturing added one more thing to its list: the ability to take on more work. Their secret: a Hypertherm Built for Business Integrated Cutting Solution.

AWC got its start fabricating boilers 60 years ago. Today it supplies some of the world’s largest heavy equipment manufacturers. Well-known names like Caterpillar, Hitachi, and Komatsu all work with AWC. One job involves 1 ¼ inch thick high strength mild steel plate. The company takes the plate, measuring 20 feet by 10 feet, and loads it onto a cutting table where a Hypertherm HyPerformance HPR400XD system cuts it into six large parts. Two of those parts join with pieces cut from a 1 inch thick plate to form a horsecollar, a circular cross-support that strengthens the frame on large trucks.

Using the Hypertherm system—with the Built for Business Integrated Cutting Solution technologies embedded within—AWC employees are able to add a top Y bevel to the edges of the plate and cut out holes before moving the parts directly over to the welding area for fit-up. “The part is cut completely by the 400. Now most parts go from the table to the fitter,” explains Alex Savage, a programmer and draftsman for the company. Once the pieces of plate are fit-up, they are tack welded together before leaving AWC’s facility for delivery to the customer.

Though the process is pretty streamlined today, it wasn’t always that way. When the company first began sixty years ago, oxyfuel and shears ruled the facility. Those two processes met AWC’s cutting needs until 1998 when the company added a plasma torch. The plasma barely managed 5/8 inch thick metal. Oxy did the rest.

Still, the company saw potential with plasma, and in 2005 following a recommendation from Linde Canada contacted Koike Aronson in New York. The team at Koike suggested adding a Hypertherm HyPerformance HPR260 system. One torch would cut large plates into parts. The parts were then picked up and moved to another table where they would add a bevel to the edges for welding preparation. AWC’s Savage says the process was tedious not only because of the increased material handling but because workers had to manually adjust the torch before and during cutting. “It was time consuming to hand bevel and it was a full time job for one person. It was on one rail and you had to set the bevel angle by hand and manually adjust your height. The True Bevel technology has greatly increased repeatability to the bevel cut parts, keeping both part size and land dimensions very consistent.”

Seven years later in 2012, company growth and a desire to cut thicker metal led AWC back to Koike. This time Koike recommended the HPR400XD. The extra power would enable AWC to cut thicker metal, while the newer XD system combined with a Hypertherm CNC, THC, and CAM software gave the company the ability to use Hypertherm’s True Bevel process to create beveled edges right on the table.

“We have more versatility now. Before we struggled to cut 1 ½ inch and we were sending parts out to be machine beveled, but with the 400 amps we can do the 2 inch stuff,” said Savage. “It has just opened up so many possibilities.”

In addition to bevels, AWC is using another Built for Business Integrated Cutting Solution application called True Hole. True Hole, with its ability to cut bolt ready holes, is employed for approximately 10 percent of AWC’s jobs. The company generally makes 1 inch round holes on plate that can range from 3/8 to 1 inch in thickness.

AWC still uses shears, punch presses, bores, and press forms in addition to plasma. Using these processes the company is able to keep 95 percent of its jobs in-house, cutting both mild steel and stainless steel with thicknesses ranging from gauge on up to 2 inches and more.

The remaining 5 percent of jobs are outsourced. Metal greater than 2” is outsourced to be oxy cut and thinner metal that’s less than 3/8 inch in thickness is sent out for laser cutting when super tight tolerances of less than1/4 millimeter are required.

Ironically oxyfuel, the process that served AWC so well for nearly a half century, is gone. The company has completely eliminated it as it no longer sees it as a viable tool. “We don’t have any need for oxyfuel as the plasma cuts up to 2 1/2 inches,” explains Peter Renco, a machine operator at AWC. Savage adds that AWC has even pierced three inches with the HPR400XD. “It is horrible on consumable life, but it can be done.”