Mobile, AL—We don't personally know Bob Lewis, general manager of Cutting Edge Metal Processing Inc., but we know the company. So we have no reason to doubt his claim that the company set a laser metal-cutting record one week in February by processing more than 783,000 pounds of steel plate. Using its 185-foot-long cutting table, which is served by two Tanaka lasers (one at 4 kW and the other at 6 kW), the company cut A-36 plates in 8- to 12-foot widths, up to 45 feet long, in thicknesses from 1/2 to 5/8 inch. Some plates had more than 100 parts cut from them.
All of this material was coated with pre-construction primer on both sides, requiring a vaporizing pass before cutting. All plates were laser marked with part assembly notations.
Part of this volume included cutting about 60,000 pounds of 10-inch × 3/4-inch × 480-inch and 540-inch flatbar to length with sniped end cuts on both ends and several internal shaped cuts.
Cutting Edge is currently cutting material for several large contracts that total more than 2500 tons of raw weight in widths up to 12 feet. The company is also the first to use Lasox cutting (see ILS January 2003) to cut plate to 11/2-inch thick.
You can e-mail Bob Lewis at [email protected] for more details. —DAB