Laser blanking gains North American presence--European company introduces its flexible blanking system to US. manufacturers

摘要

When it comes to mass producing sheet metal components, it's been hard to beat old technology, especially the mechanical stamping press in blanking operations. Although programs like single-minute exchange of dies (SMED) have helped make shorter runs more productive, they still don't change the fact that those dies needed to be machined first. This is why some have looked to lower-volume situations, such as job shops, where for decades lasers have cut small batches of nested parts. Could this concept be transferred to the production-blanking environment? Wouldn't it be great if all it took to change over to another part of the same metal gauge were a new CNC program?