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Stainless steel stockholder boosts productivity with bandsaw

26 November 2018

Singapore-based Sin Ghee Huat is a prominent stainless steel stockholder with a portfolio of more than 4,000 products that it supplies to customers throughout Asia, Oceania, China and the Middle East.

The requirement to cut material has increased significantly over the years in line with the growth in orders and the sawing machinery was not really able to cope with the higher volumes. Cutting times were too long and the sawing function gradually became a bottleneck. 

The point came in 2016 when Sin Ghee Huat's management decided to invest to extend its bandsawing capacity. The German sawing machine manufacturer Kasto was the chosen supplier, as it also makes storage systems for industrial materials and had delivered a Unibloc stacking cradle a few years previously to the Singapore facility. It was an exercise that the stockholder's operations manager Shawn Lim described as very positive.

He explained: "While we are now one of the pioneers in our sector, our roots actually lie in the scrap metal trade. Back in the 1980s our management at the time decided to specialise in stainless steel, recognising the enormous potential of the market. Since then, we have grown dynamically and now have a number of subsidiaries including in the Chinese city of Suzhou. Despite this, we process most orders at our Singapore headquarters. 

"Before material is delivered to customers, several operations including sawing to length are frequently completed, a task that demands considerable effort because most stainless steels are difficult to cut. It is therefore vital for us to have powerful sawing machines that can ensure short cutting times and high productivity."

At the outset, he was concerned that a manufacturer from Germany would not be able to provide the level of service in Asia that the stockholder expects from its suppliers, but were reassured by the opening of a Kasto branch in Singapore at about the time as the storage system was delivered. So he had no hesitation in ordering a KASTOwin A 4.6 automatic bandsaw - the first of this machine range to be installed in Singapore - to upgrade their cutting capacity.

The machine is employed for efficient sawing of solid material, tube and section and was delivered with extensive standard equipment. It is suitable for processing a range of steels and its frequency-controlled drive offers high performance coupled with low energy consumption. Cutting range is 460 mm. 

Sin Ghee Huat mainly uses the torsionally rigid, vibration-damped saw to cut stainless steel bar, a task that it accomplishes quickly, precisely and quietly, according to Mr Lim. The vice and saw feed are equipped with zero-play linear guideways and ballscrew drives ensure controlled material feed and cutting. They enable the KASTOwin to achieve a cutting accuracy of ± 0.1 mm over a 100 mm length at band speeds up to 150 m/min.

The intuitive, touch-screen SmartControl brings additional benefits. It contains data on all of the types and cross sections of material stocked so that the parameters for sawing can be input easily. As a result, idle times have been greatly reduced.

Additionally the KASTOrespond system, which was developed for the KASTOwin bandsaw range, records the forces on the blade and uses an intelligent algorithm to convert the data continuously into the optimum rate of downfeed, making the sawing process particularly efficient.

 
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