• Advanced Manufacturing

Lantek Expert and iQuoting are indispensable at A13 Engineering

  • Advanced Manufacturing
A13 Engineering moved from plasma cutting to laser cutting in October 23 with the installation of a Bodor 12kW Laser and Lantek Expert software. Harry Hodgetts, Managing Director at A13 Engineering says, “With high-definition plasma, we found that it was not suitable for about 10% of our production, driving us to invest in a laser cutter giving higher accuracy and automatic part etching for easy component identification.”

Which cutting technology is the most suited to your plant?

  • Nesting
Thirty years ago, the global distribution of sheet metal cutting machine-tools was dominated by the oxycut variety (large thicknesses) and, to a lesser extent, the plasma variety (small thicknesses). There was a niche for punching machines along with water jet and laser machines. The latter were aimed at thicknesses less than 5mm and were expensive. Since then, the trend has shifted, shrugging oxycut in favor of other technologies according to thicknesses.

Machine Communication Standards

  • Advanced Manufacturing
We all know that our goal is to achieve online connectivity between our IT systems and the real processes taking place in our factories. However, in reality, nowadays there is no single communication standard which allows us to communicate our IT solutions (ERP/MRP/MES) to any given machine from any given manufacturer and, of all these terms, it is not easy to understand which are important in each case.