Paramount Fitness Corp., a manufacturer of strength training equipment, used to purchase small quantities of laser-cut parts from outside vendors. Its desire for a laser could not be justified because the quantities of parts were so low. Engineers at TRUMPF worked with Paramount to create special fixtures so that a TC L 2530 sheet metal laser could handle tubular parts. The company soon found the new laser running 10 hours per day, six days a week. In keeping with the company's strategy to reduce direct labor, it soon justified a TUBEMATIC to handle its tubular parts.

For more than 30 years, lasers have been used successfully for flat sheet cutting. Complex 3-D laser cutting is well-established in the automotive industry.

Steel and aluminum have distinctly different properties, and this is important if you're manufacturing aluminum piping systems. Learn the differences in welding steel and aluminum pipe and how they apply to the best practices you can use to weld aluminum pipe effectively.

Although the health effects of welding exposures often are difficult to predict, components of welding fumes have a range of toxicities that, under the right conditions, can affect many parts of the body adversely. Knowing what situations and welding process components can negatively impact your health is the first step toward learning how to protect yourself from those health hazards.

Owners of mid-sized businesses (those that sell for $2 million to $250 million) should know that the environment for selling such a business has grown increasingly harsh over the past 25 years or so. Many of the competitive forces at work in the global arena that have made manufacturing overseas attractive have made overseas manufacturing companies attractive investments, to the detriment of U.S. business owners. However, knowledge and planning can help an owner of a mid-sized manufacturing firm get a premium price for his business.

Planning an offline band sawing system can be complicated because it can affect, and is affected by, many interrelated factors. Breaking it down to infeed, sawing, and outfeed helps to frame the planning by breaking it down to three subprocesses. Furthermore, answering 15 pertinent questions can help you tailor an efficient sawing operation to your specific facility and sawing applications.

The welding process and ambient temperature affect the structure and mechanical properties of welded joints in large-diameter (1,420 mm) pipes of manganese low-alloy steels, which are used commonly in oil and gas pipelines. Pulsed welding can improve the homogeneity of the structure and reduce the grain size of metal of the weld and HAZ zones. The ambient temperature causes structural changes, which affect the ductility and impact toughness in the welded joint zones. Temperature plays a role. Research shows that welding at 20 degrees C leads to an increase in ductility and impact toughness of 8 percent to 27 percent, and welding at -60 degrees C leads to an increase of 15 percent to 24 percent.