As the team charged with bringing projects designed and engineered by Groupe Lar to life, the team at Quebec’s Lar Machinerie is constantly busy. The company’s jobs regularly include large projects, such as fabricating heavy overhead cranes, hoists, gates, and even dam spillways. These large projects require the use of thick plate, which can often measure 2, and occasionally even 6, inches in thickness. Because it often cut thick plate, this 72 year old company traditionally relied on oxyfuel as its cutting process. Its most recent system was a six torch flame cutter purchased in the late nineties.

Though the cutter obviously served the company well, Lar Machinerie was becoming increasingly concerned with throughput. “Cut quality was okay but we wanted to improve performance. We needed to accelerate production to meet variables in our business,” explains Luc Tremblay, the production manager at Lar. “Even when running the old machines 24 / 7 we had difficulty meeting our production needs.”

Lar Machinerie knew it had a problem. What it needed now was a solution. The company began researching different metal cutting options before quickly deciding on plasma. It felt plasma offered the right combination of cut quality, productivity, operating cost, and versatility. After reaching out to a number of different cutting table manufacturers, Lar Machinerie decided on a system from fellow Quebec company, Machitech Automation. Lar Machinerie chose Machitech Automation for a number of reasons, including its reputation for providing thorough support to its customers. The system Lar Machinerie chose was a Platinum Cut table with a HyPerformance Plasma HPR400XD system, EDGE Pro CNC, Sensor THC, and ProNest CAM software, collectively referred to as a Built for Business Integrated Cutting Solution. By choosing this combination of hardware and software, Lar Machinerie could take advantage of Hypertherm only performance applications such as Rapid Part and True Hole.

It didn’t take long for the company to see the benefits of its new plasma system. Even though the company moved from six torches to just one plasma torch, its production capability doubled almost immediately. “When I have to increase production, I can do so very, very quickly,” Tremblay adds. “What I was doing in five weeks before, I can now do in two to three weeks.”

In addition to doubling its production capability and getting jobs out the door faster, Lar Machinerie realized three other benefits from its switch to plasma. The first is improved cut quality. Even though La Machinerie was happy with the cut quality it was getting before, it is seeing even better cut quality today. Tolerances using the plasma system are within 1 millimeter of specifications when cutting large plate. The second is less need for secondary operations. Steel coming off the table today requires less re-work saving the team at Lar Machinerie even more time. Finally, Lar Machinerie is now able to cut more than just the carbon steel it was limited to with oxyfuel. It can now cut stainless, aluminum and more when needed. The company uses flame cutting occasionally when a job requires plate in excess of 2 inches for example—but for the most part, the plasma system is doing much of the cutting at Lar Machinerie today.