Production Cutting Services (PCS) is on a roll. Established in 1985 by owner and founder Bill Duy along with two other employees; the company has grown to a sophisticated multi-million dollar operation specializing in fabricated metal processing, particularly tube.

 “We started out as a saw-cutting operation to supply cut-to-length tubes to the big agricultural equipment companies,” Duy says. “It wasn’t long afterward that we recognized we needed to add more value to survive.”

Value was added originally in the form of milled contours, drilled holes, and other operations provided by CNC machining centers. But, machining centers faced several hurdles in processing Production Cutting Service’s tube parts.

Setup and processing time were two examples. One part involved a 4-in. x 4-in. part made from rectangular tube 0.25-in. thick. It had holes on all four sides that had to be held to 0.010-in. relative to each other. “First we’d cut it to length,” Duy says. “Then we’d bring the pieces to the machining center where there were two vises. Each vise held a part and the machine was programmed to drill one side for each position. After each cycle was finished, the operator had to stop and turn the tube to the next side. So not only were there four setups per piece, the operator had to deburr the inside of each hole with a hand tool. And if the operator rotated the part the wrong way, it was scrap.”

The drilling operation also presented some inherent difficulties. “Once the drill makes contact with the tube, the tube walls begin to vibrate and flex,” Duy explains. “Not only does it cause burrs, it can affect accuracy to the extent that I’ve seen a round drill cut a triangular hole in tube. Plus, vibrations can ruin tooling, damaging a $500 tool in a matter of seconds.”

By 2002, Production Cutting Services was ready for a different way, installing a 2500w SpaceGear-U44 3D rotary laser from Mazak Optonics Corporation and a 4000 watt FabriGear 300 also from Mazak Optonics two years later.

“We’ve gone through a metamorphosis,” Duy says of the results. “We really underestimated how much setup time, part-handling, and the accompanying machine idle time was costing us. Now, when the material is on the laser, it’s making parts.”

Duy calls laser processing a “lean engine” for his company because it has sped up processing, decreased operator involvement, and freed up capacity for new business. “We’re not walking away from CNC machining,” he says. “On the contrary, with large OEMs continuing to pare down vendors, we want to keep giving our customer base as wide a range of processing choices as possible.”

But the lasers have absorbed the majority of Duy’s tube processing and with good reason. On the rectangular tube part described earlier, the operator simply attaches the tube to the SpaceGear-U44’s rotary chuck. As for advantages, there’s no need to manually turn the part, the laser cutting process leaves no need for manual deburring, and PCS also was able to eliminate an extra beveling step. “So we went from four setups to one, and the cycle time was reduced between 50 and 60%,” Duy says. And since the laser also cuts off the part, a single 10 foot tube loaded into the rotary chuck produces numerous parts.

Over the last four years, sales have more than doubled for Production Cutting Services and the company has plans to continue expanding. “Agriculture and construction equipment markets are good at present, but we see a lot of growth potential in more thin-walled tubing for office equipment, gyms, trailers, and other applications,” Duy says. And he has his CNC equipment set up in cells to accommodate castings, forgings, and processing other materials less well-suited to his lasers.

“We’ve created a company that’s capable of supplying a variety of parts fabricated to customer specifications,” Duy says. “And there’s room to grow.”

“... we went from four setups to one, and the cycle time was reduced between 50 and 60%”

 
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