Posted to News on 23rd Oct 2007, 18:41
Waterjet cutting improves quality and reduces costs
BJF Profiling's recent £1.3million investment in new machines and apparatus has allowed the company to strengthen its position in various markets. The shop fitting industry serves to illustrate the wide variety of materials that BJF can cut - ranging from steel to composite materials with thicknesses from 1mm to 125mm. BJF's diverse ability enables it to accommodate most cutting requirements from flat substrates to round and box sections.
Mild and stainless steel are regularly cut and, using an L Trumpf 5kW Flatbed Laser and a recently acquired Trumpf Tubematic tube profiler to cut round, box and rectangular tubing and pipes, BJF can create a variety of profiles and products. For shop fitters, this includes signage, end brackets for supporting shelving, and flat profiling for point-of-sale units.
Waterjet cutting
Reflective materials such as thick aluminium and copper are sometimes required to be profiled. As these cannot be cut by laser, BJF instead uses a Flow Waterjet cutter. With waterjet, BJF is capable of profiling virtually any material at a wider range of thickness to a fine finish that cannot be achieved with conventional lasers.
Bernie Faiers, Managing Director of BJF Profiling, says: "Along with our normal laser business of flat plate processing we have installed further machines to expand the service we can offer our clients. These include the latest flat plate laser cutting machine to complement the existing lasers, a tube cutter and a dynamic head waterjet cutter.
"With the installation of the tube cutter, profiles are now able to be cut in tube and box section that would not been possible because of the high manufacturing costs involved.
"The water jet cutter allows us to process more intricate profiles with much better corner versatility that is available on conventional machines. The other advantage is there is less heat discharge or tension build up in the parts being cut. This allows a larger range of materials and shapes to be profiled.
"The new cutting technology and speed improvement has allowed us to reduce our pricing for these services to our customer. As a result of this we have seen a marked increase in interest and orders especially form shop fitting and architectural designers."
