BEAMS 4-SIDE CUTTING PIPECUTTING CUSTOMER · PDF fileInovatech also added code to the nesting...

BOLTHOLES

BEAMS

COPING4-SIDE C

UTTING

PIPECUTTING

BEVELING

MARKING

CUSTO

MER

EXPERIENCES

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The support we get from Inovatech is phenomenal. They don’t just sell and

walk away. We can now complete bigger jobs faster using the same amount of people. Inovatech took us to a whole new level... from a small ornamental

fabricator to the second largest structural steel company in Arizona.

Brandon Bell, Owner Bell Steel Inc.

[www.inovatechengineering.com]

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INOVATECH ENGINEERING CORP | CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES

1-877-453-0517 (EN/FR)

From its start—as a one-person shop doing light commercial fabrication jobs up through today—Fabrication Products has worked hard to remain successful and competitive. More than thirty years of history helps. Begun in 1985, Fabrication Products is today an established business with forty or so people. The company was purchased in early 2016 by long time employees Marsha Dee and Greg Sword. Their goal: to continue for another thirty years, though they knew that further automation was critical to success.

It is a well-rounded group with fitters, layout personnel, welders, helpers, painters, inspectors, and delivery drivers. Working out of a 40,000 square-foot fabrication facility in Vancouver, WA, the team fabricates a wide range of projects. Work runs the gamut from multi-story towers to increasingly sophisticated hydro projects, including dams and fish management systems for many water districts and government agencies.

Although Fabrication Products has enjoyed steady growth from larger, increasingly complex projects and has a certified, highly skilled team in place, the firm recently found itself in a peculiar situation. Greg Sword explains: “We weren’t winning much on the structural side. The smaller guys had less overhead, while the bigger guys were more efficient because they had more automation.”

Sword could lower his overhead by reducing the size of his business, or he could automate. He easily chose the latter. Hopping on a plane to San Antonio Texas, and the 2017 NASCC

Steel Show, Sword started shopping. Because Fabrication Products cuts a lot of wide flanges, tube steel, and channels, Sword suspected a beam line system would make an excellent addition to his company.

“Cutting that type of material takes a great deal of time. For us, it was all manual so we weren’t very efficient,” Sword says. He adds that his team had considered purchasing a robotic plasma beam line, but didn’t want to buy too early. “When we looked, they were still new and unproven. Now, however, we felt the time was right. They’ve come a long way in the last ten years.”

SteelPRO 600—A Perfect Fit

Sword met with several equipment manufacturers at the show. There he found Inovatech Engineering—a Canadian-based provider of integrated robotic systems. When he had gained a better sense of Sword’s business and needs, Inovatech's owner Miguel Clement knew one of his company’s SteelPRO systems would make the perfect fit. Sword ultimately chose the SteelPRO 600 beam line, one of Inovatech’s smaller offerings. Sword liked the fact that he could quickly integrate the system into his existing

fabrication process, while still having the ability to quickly process a wide range of material shapes and sizes.

In early June of that year, less than two-and-a-half months after finding Inovatech, Fabrication Products took delivery of its new SteelPRO system. A few days following installation, the company was already burning beams on its newly automated system. With a nimble robotic arm zooming around cutting parts, suddenly Fabrication Products was processing parts faster than they had ever dreamed possible. All of the cutting, including precision cutting of bolt holes and bevels, was finished in a fraction of the time versus manual labor.

Robotic Plasma Put to Task

Sword shares a case study, using a recent structural project. The job required eight-inch holes to be cut at a 15 degree angle—straight through the flanges and webs of a wide beam.

“These holes were taking up to ninety minutes to cut by hand. Today, we're averaging maybe three minutes per hole. I can run a beam with five or six holes in 15 minutes,” Sword says.

Inovatech’s Clement explains it this

Fabrication Products: Burning Beams in No TimeArticle by Spark, Fall Issue 2017 [www.hyperthermspark.com] SteelPRO

INOVATECHENGINEERING

“The (600) system has transformed our whole operation. We are so much more

efficient and competitive.”Marsha Dee / Greg Sword

Fabrication Products Vancouver, Washington

[ 4 ] [www.inovatechengineering.com]

SteelPROINOVATECHENGINEERING

With a nimble robotic arm zooming around cutting parts, suddenly Fabrication Products was processing

parts faster than they had ever dreamed possible.

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1-877-453-0517 (EN/FR)

way: “This client had 200-plus beams. Using the old method, Sword needed ten-plus man hours per beam. That’s 2,000 hours, or a year of work, for a highly skilled and well-compensated employee. But the 600 machine only needed fifteen minutes to cut a beam. That’s four beams per hour—and all 200 beams in fifty hours.”

State-of-the-art Plasma System

Fabrication Products’ SteelPRO 600 was the first machine to make use of Hypertherm’s new XPR300® X-Definition™ Plasma. This plasma offers many engineering advances, including a number of patent pending technologies, to take high definition plasma to the next level. The result, Hypertherm says, is a highly efficient system that cuts and pierces faster than its HyPerformance® HPR260XD® system. The XPR300 is also capable of cutting thicker material than the 260XD, while delivering squarer cut edges, markedly less angularity, and excellent surface finish on non-ferrous metals like aluminum and stainless.

Sword says, “The 600, plus the new XPR300 plasma, has a huge range of capabilities as far as sizes. It has really transformed our whole operation. We are far more efficient and competitive. Before, we would need to load the material onto a saw with the forklift, cut it, take it off the rollers, and then bring it back around the building to begin the layout and fabrication process. That ate up a lot of time.”

Continuous Production Capabilities

Today, company employees still have to load material onto the machine, but they are able to do so while the system is busy cutting another pipe or beam. So someone can load new material while the robotic arm cuts

or marks a second piece and the third piece is being unloaded at the other end. I-beams, H-beams, tubing, angle, channel, flat bar, and bulb flats can all be cut this way. As a bonus, the system is completely reversible, making it easy to switch direction when Fabrication Products has the need to do so.

Business Like it Used to Be

For Greg Sword, It’s a big change from the way things used to be done.

Sword’s start at Fabrication Products goes back fifteen years, to 2002. “When I got here,” he explains, “we used to do everything by hand. We would take the drawings, lay the part out with chalk marks, shear it, then use the punch.”

Sword continues, “I’ve been able to bring in quite a bit of work based on the SteelPRO machine’s capacity. We are booked out at least six months. The difference is like night and day.We’re light-years ahead of where we used to be. I can run the machine for a day, and it takes the welders in the shop three or four days to catch up. Before, it was just the opposite. The shop was always waiting for us.”

Continued: Fabrication Products—Burning Beams in No Time

“We are light years ahead of where we were. I can run the machine for a day, and it takes the welders in the shop

three or four days to catch up. Before, it was just the opposite. The shop was

always waiting for us.”

SteelPROINOVATECHENGINEERING


SteelPROINOVATECHENGINEERING.COMSteelPRO


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1-877-453-0517 (EN/FR)

Shipbuilder Automates with SteelPro 900Article by Spark, Fall Issue 2015 [www.hyperthermspark.com] SteelPRO

INOVATECHENGINEERING.COMSteelPRO


A job that used to require six people now needs only one.

Because this shipyard is running three shifts, cost savings can add up quickly. Indeed, Gunderson Marine (a GBX company) estimates there are days when it runs more than 4,000 linear feet of material through its SteelPRO 900.

Walt Stokman, a shipyard production coordinator, calls this last part a huge benefit. “Our 900 has the plate table, so we can cut 2-D parts at the same time. But we use our conventional plate machine, too. For instance, when we need to rush a part we can put that on the 900 really fast. Or, if there is an engineering change, we can quickly cut a one-off part without interfering with structural cutting. The 900 is very versatile. We can cut just about any shape we can dream up.”

SteelPRO Robotic Software Suite Saves Time and Money

The ability to work quickly is due in large part to Inovatech’s SteelPRO robotic software suite. Much of it is custom designed, such as the software Inovatech custom-created to work with Gunderson’s ship design program. This software, which Stokman says was created for a fraction of the price the other vendors wanted, allows Gunderson to easily import files. “We are able to import directly into the nesting software. In short order, all of our nests are ready and we can cut material.”

Inovatech also added code to the nesting software (Hypertherm ProNest®) to work with Gunderson’s specialized cut list. This alone is credited with saving the company 24 hours of office work each week. At the same time, it removes the potential for human error.

The 900 is very versatile. We can cut just about any shape we can dream up.”

Walt Stokman Gunderson Marine Portland, Oregon

SteelPRO 900 as it is being installed at Gunderson Marine


SteelPROINOVATECHENGINEERING.COMSteelPRO


"The Inovatech team quickly wrote us a software program that changed our beam processing time from minutes to seconds."

Danny Goboitsios General Manager, Pittsburgh Steel

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1-877-453-0517 (EN/FR)

After declining through much of the last decade, structural fabricators are growing again, albeit modestly. Estimates by Grand View Research project that the global structural steel market will top $119 billion by 2022. Translated into volume, Grand View projects the industry will grow from using 120 million tons of steel today to more than 164 million-plus tons per year in 2022. That’s a lot of steel to be formed, fabricated, and erected.

Structural steel fabricators are already seeing more work come through their doors, while others are struggling to keep up. Part of the problem is that they have fewer workers. As more and more baby boomers retire, managers are finding less workers to fill the void.

Automation Helps Structural Steel Fabricators Tackle the Future

More work with fewer workers, and increasing competitive pressure are leading these companies to realize they have just one choice: automation. Even so, companies are finding the road that leads to automation is not always a smooth one. Exploring all the various options and figuring out how to finance the equipment can be challenging prospects for some who are simply trying to fill their existing business needs.

Arizona

"I really like the layout of the SteelPRO 900," states Brandon Bell, the owner of Bell Steel. "I also like the ability to have one piece of equipment perform two different operations. Otherwise, I’d have to purchase two different

machines, worry about two machines, and teach my people how to use two different interfaces."

Like many others, Brandon Bell was grappling with how to move his company forward when he attended the FABTECH trade show. Bell wanted to learn and better understand what new technologies were available. “We knew that if we wanted to take our business to the next level, we needed to process beams faster," says Bell. "Our method of cutting beams with a band saw and then using a punch was holding us back.”

While walking the show floor, Bell stopped at the Inovatech Engineering booth. The systems this Canadian company had on display intrigued him because they combined a traditional X-Y table with a sophisticated robot.

“The SteelPRO machine had the robot, plus Hypertherm’s True Hole, all combined in a really small footprint. I thought that would work perfectly for us,” Bell says. After discussing his needs with Inovatech partner Miguel Clement, Bell purchased the system and hasn’t looked back since then.

Mississauga

In a bid to lessen man hours and increase capacity, Pittsburgh Steel Group—among other structural steel fabricators—purchased its first piece of automated equipment about six years ago. As was the case at Bell Steel, Inovatech Engineering's automation was the right solution.

“It actually exceeded my expectations. I can’t imagine working without it,”

Danny Goboitsios, general manager at Pittsburgh Steel exclaims. “Our SteelPRO machine cuts four to five times faster than anybody who still does it manually. It’s cutting beams and bolt holes, doing everything faster and the quality is so much better. It has totally revolutionized the way we fabricate steel."

Goboitsios continues, "The 900's unique design combines automated plasma cutting of structural steel and flat plate in a relatively small footprint.

"We landed a job cutting 4,000 solar posts out of wide-flange steel beams. The Inovatech team quickly wrote us a software program that changed our beam processing time from minutes to seconds. Now, we process a whole beam—cut, cope, and add holes—in the time it takes to do a single cut on the band saw."

Ontario

After more than 20 years in business, Canada's Quad Steel also decided to automate. “For us it was about growth,” says Dennis Marijanovic, a co-owner at Quad Steel. “We had to find a way to stay competitive with the smaller fabricators, who have lower overhead, and the larger fabricators, who can handle higher volume.”

Structural Steel Fabricators Like SteelPRO Article by Spark, Summer Issue 2015 [www.hyperthermspark.com] SteelPRO

INOVATECHENGINEERING.COMSteelPRO


“Current Inovatech customers raved about how Inovatech was always willing to work with the fabricator to improve

the process.”Jean-François Charron

President, Acier NordFab


"After owning the machine for four years, we still get upgrades that increase speed and functionality. We just received Inovatech's new software, 'Async'

that increased our machine's speed by 40%!" Jean-Francois Charron

Owner, Acier Nordfab Inc

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1-877-453-0517 (EN/FR)

Quad chose to equip its SteelPRO with a Hypertherm HyPerformance 400XD plasma system. Result: this 900 can process just about any type of structural or flat profile in any thickness.

But good customer support is equally important to any business seeking to automate. When Quad Steel's shop flooded during installation, Inovatech and Quad worked hand-in-hand to get their machine up and running quickly. Within one week, Quad was rapidly cutting beams.

“I can now cut up to 150 tons a week, or 74 tons of structural steel, in just three days,” Marijanovic says. “As an example, we were able to complete a job I’d allocated three weeks for in a week. Doing it by hand, I planned for 11 working days. But the robot did it in three days. Cuts I’d allocated an hour and 15 minutes to do were finished in a minute and a half.”

All told, Quad reduced man-hours on that job from its original estimate of 1,600 hours to 800 hours, which enabled the company to easily meet its delivery schedule. Quad is also happy with how easy the system was to learn. “Inovatech's software is incredible. It’s so easy to learn, and it’s foolproof, too.” Marijanovic boasts. “I was able to train an operator on a Saturday morning. I started teaching at seven a.m., went to my son’s soccer game at nine, and by the time I got back the guy I'd just trained was running the system all by himself!”

Quebec

Another Canadian-based structural steel supplier, Acier Nordfab, always did its cutting using manual methods. For nearly its entire thirty-year history, the company used a magnetic drill to

punch holes, a band saw to cut the profiles down to length, and a manual coping machine.

Its methods were working well for the company, however, Acier NordFab president Jean-François Charron kept running into the same big problem: labor. “It is getting harder and harder to find people," Charron says, "Our company really had no choice—if we wanted to stay competitive.”

The company also chose Inovatech, taking possession of the very first SteelPRO 900 system. “Our choice was really quite easy,” Charron says. “This company was close-by, clean, and I liked the way it operated. I had not found anyone else like Inovatech.”

Today Acier NordFab is cutting plate, beams, and tubes with the system. It can cut steel down to size, and then add holes, notches, and bevels using its one machine. Time-savings are quite significant. As an example, programming for beveled parts takes one-tenth the time it did before, and its overall parts quality is much higher.

“The precision is better than what we were doing by hand,” Charron says. “We have fewer problems than before, and are making fewer mistakes. We’re also seeing the erection time on site is much faster, with much less error.”

Service & Support is Critical to Automation Success

All four companies we've covered in this article—Bell Steel, Pittsburgh Steel Group, Quad Steel, and Acier NordFab—are reaping clear benefits following to the decision to automate. Collectively though, they agree that their success is due in large part to working with a responsive partner.

“The support we get from Inovatech is phenomenal," states Brandon Bell.

"They don’t just sell and walk away, they are always there for us.”

Pittsburgh Steel’s Goboitsios echoes Bell’s praise, “They are impeccable with their service. You call on their cell and they answer right away—and on the off chance they don’t answer, they will get back to you within minutes.”

Though Inovatech helped Pittsburgh Steel streamline its operations in a number of ways, one instance that stands out in Goboitsios’s mind is how Inovatech helped the company cut in half the amount of money it was spending on consumables. Pittsburgh Steel is routinely cutting holes, hundreds of them, into two-and-one-half-inch base plates that are used to anchor large columns. As anyone who has cut holes in steel knows, all of that hole cutting requires heavy piercing, which creates a pile of molten metal on the plate that can splash up, stick to the torch, and quickly ruin both the torch and the consumables inside it.

Inovatech helped Pittsburgh overcome the issue by writing a program that has the torch pre-pierce the plate. Within three days, Pittsburgh had gone from an average of 15 pierces per set of consumables to 1,200 pierces.

Charron agrees. “In talking to current Inovatech customers, they all raved about the customer service and how Inovatech was always willing to work with the fabricator to improve the process.”

Adds Bell, “Inovatech moved Bell Steel up to a whole new level. We can now complete bigger jobs faster using the same amount of people. In fact, Inovatch took us from being a small ornamental fabricator to the second largest structural steel company in Arizona today.”

Continued: Structural Steel Fabricators Like SteelPRO

[www.inovatechengineering.com]

FULLCIRCLE™

Trademarks used herein are the registered property of their respective owners. Subject matter by Hypertherm SPARK is used with permission from Hypertherm.

Inovatech Engineering Corp. 101 Steve Fonyo Dr. P.O. Box #479 Vankleek Hill, Ontario Canada, K0B 1R0

Inovatech Engineering Corp. is in the business of providing integrated robotic solutions for manufacturing. We strive to continually improve production speed, productivity, and efficiency without compromising quality, customer satisfaction, and profitability. Our dedicated engineers will take the time to understand your company’s requirements to develop customized solutions.1-877-453-0517

(English/French) [email protected]

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