A fabricator of large pressure vessels implements a welding power source to help it meet growing customer demand and ensure stringent quality standards without expanding its work force.

An expanding metal fabrication shop invests in lasers to help it produce precision parts and manage tight lead times.

Ever more stringent safety standards, driven largely by OSHA and state regulators, have led many fabricators to examine closely their material handling processes. Side loaders can provide safety benefits as well as improve material handling efficiency.

Tube benders require safeguarding around the perimeter of the machine and area in front of the machine, where the tube is bent, and in the back where the tube is fed. Laser scanning devices offers several advantageous features. Because laser scanning is a noncontact method, it minimizes interference with the machine operation, and because the scanner mounts at the foot of the machine and out of the way of the tube bending action, it allows full access to the work area.

Family-owned Hansen Steel Services started six years ago with a 600-ft. long empty building and a combined 144 years of experience and built it into a thriving job shop that shoulders large plate fabrications.

A real breakthrough in high-speed laser cutting occurred in 2005. Two additional parallel kinematic drive axes were placed near the point where the laser exits the head, creating a laser cutting machine with one dynamic and light cutting torch capable of independent movement along two axes but working in precise synchronicity with the machine's more sweeping movement of the laser head. This new approach opened up new frontiers and much higher limits in processing speed.