Unilap steps into new sectors with Vollmer

Darrell Hughes founded South Yorkshire Saw & Tool Co in 1974 as a small saw blade sharpening and ancillary supply company. Wind forward almost 50 years from the inception of a company working out of a two-bay garage and the transformation of the Doncaster-based company is beyond comprehension. Everything has changed. The company name, the facility, the industries served and the manufacturing processes.In fact, the only remaining constants are the long-serving personnel, family ownership and sharpening technology from Vollmer UK.

Changing its name in 1992 to Systco Unilap, the saw blade sharpening company acquired its first Vollmer machine in the late 1970s and has bought a complete suite of German-built machines over the years. To manufacture the countless product lines with thousands of new, re-sharpened and serviced tools delivered every week, the company has 11 Vollmer machines.Three arrived in 2022.

With 25% annual post-Covid expansion in traditional markets and growth in new segments, Unilap needed capacity, hence its investment in a Vollmer CHX840 with HS loading system in April 2022. Quickly following this machine was a Vollmer QXD250 with HC5 loader in July, with a Vgrind 260 with HC4 loading system arriving in October of the same year.

The reasoning behind the CHX840 and the QXD250 was simple. Unilap purchased the automated CHX840 saw blade sharpening machine to add unmanned ‘lights-out’ running and alleviate capacity on the 22-employee company’s other saw blade manufacturing and servicing machines. Likewise, Unilap already had a nine-year-old Vollmer QXD200 machine running around the clock, so upgrading to a brand-new QXD250 would add capacity and support rapid growth in the metalworking industry.

For further information www.vollmer-group.com

New saws give edge to British Steel project  

The arrival of three new Behringer saws at British Steel’s Skinningrove service centre will herald a major new milestone in its development.The £2.2m equipment will be a pivotal part of the operation, bringing increased productivity, greater accuracy and more intuition to the whole process of making special profiles for customers.

The £26m centre will include cut-to-length lines, product milling, machining and warehousing operations, and will enable British Steel to make and process an extended range of value-added profiles for the forklift industry.

The process of making sure special profiles meet requirements involves cutting down 14m bars, where accuracy is critical. The new saws will automate the process, deliveringmore precisionandthree times more speed than the previous saws.The advanced milling and machining capability will mean British Steel can offer profiles with tolerances of just 0.1mm.

Project manager at the Skinningrove service centre, Stuart Webster, says: “The new saws and product transportation systems that Behringer are providing will be integral to our facility.They will allow Skinningrove Special Profiles to move into the next phase ofanticipated market development in forklift mast sales. The saws will also significantly improve our capability to cut all products faster and meet tighter tolerances that satisfy the developing requirements of our customer base.”

British Steel’sspecial profiles business manufactures 250,000 tonnes of specialist products for a range of sectors, including the material handling market, of which the “profitable and growing” market for forklift trucks is a part.

For further information www.britishsteel.co.uk

Kasto sets out digital and ecological credentials

Kasto, the German manufacturer of automated warehouses for storing and retrieving raw material, both long stock and sheet, and which also produces sawing machines for cutting it to size, has been enhancing the connectivity and operational efficiency of its equipment. Whether it is a stockholder or a manufacturing facility using the storage systems and/or sawing machines, they now benefit not only from higher productivity but also lower running costs through more economical use of electrical power. As an added bonus, more data is available to drive end-to-end decision-making, from order to delivery.

The company says its solutions ensure continuously controlled, intelligent material flow. Machines, systems, goods and load carriers communicate autonomously, enabling flexible, resource-efficient, economical storage and fabrication. In this way, users remain competitive despite the rising costs of energy and materials, while at the same time improving their ecological performance.

KASTOlogic is a modular warehouse management system (WMS) designed for bar and sheet metal storage requirements. The software enables users to manage and monitor not only processes in the warehouse itself, but also upstream and downstream operations. It is also possible to integrate manually operated storage areas into the system using the mobile app.

KASTOenergysave is an energy recovery concept developed for automated storage systems. It enables excess potential or kinetic energy to be converted into electrical power, which is stored in double-layer capacitors for later use.

During sawing operations, users face the challenge of making the best use of stock and avoiding waste to lower material consumption and costs. The KASTOoptisaw software module optimises the assignment of long stock to every cutting order, taking into account the parameters of the various sawing machines. KASTOapp provides a status overview of all sawing machines in the system.

For further information www.kasto.com

Grinder of the Year

Young talent can now register for the Grinder of the Year competition and put their theoretical knowledge and practical grinding skills to the test. Alongside the Grinder of the Year 2024 title itself, training vouchers of up to €3500 are also up for grabs alongside many other attractive prizes. Apprentices, journeymen and women, as well as career-changers, can apply up to 26 February 2024. The campaign has been launched by GrindingHub, the trade fair for grinding technology, in cooperation with the Australian grinding machine manufacturer and principal sponsor Anca.

For further information www.grinder-of-the-year.de

E&DZone sponsor

Global metal-cutting specialist Sandvik Coromant will once again bethe headline sponsor of the MACH 2024 Education & Development Zone. Having sponsored the zone since its introduction at MACH 2012, Sandvik Coromant’s continued support demonstrates its commitment to inspiring the next generation of engineers to join the manufacturing technologies sector. With over 3000 students in the age range of 11-18 expected to attend the event this year, MACH 2024 promises to provide lots for them to see and experience with interactive activities organised by key contributors.

For further information www.machexhibition.com