TWI Industrial Member Report Summary 605/1997
D S Howse and P A Hilton
Whether seeking to purchase a new piece of capital equipment, or to make use of subcontract services, any organisation wishing to produce profiled components is faced with the choice of a wide range of processes and techniques.
Background
A number of profiling processes have been compared in terms of both their technical and economic performance. For some materials and some thicknesses it is relatively easy to select the cutting process, as the particular requirements can easily exclude several available processes. However, for other materials, eg carbon steel, and thicknesses, eg 1-12mm, several competitive processes are available and the situation then becomes much more ill-defined. In simple terms, factors affecting selection of a cutting process reduce the quality of product and cost of production. The first of these factors has been addressed by an assessment of the quality of edges produced on a testpiece profile, using a range of materials, thicknesses and cutting processes. In order to address the second factor, spreadsheet software has been developed to assess the economic implications of a chosen cutting process, and to assist in the choice of that process.
Objectives
- To determine and compare cut quality, for a range of industrially available profile cutting processes
- To provide a mechanism for assessment of the various cutting processes from an economic standpoint
- To provide guidelines (from the technical and economic point of view) for the choice of cutting process for particular materials and material thicknesses.