Compact laser alleviates tube fabricator's cutting, drilling woes

Kitchen equipment manufacturer Franke used to get by with manual fabrication processes for its tubular components. Cutting to length on a saw and drilling to make holes on a drill press weren’t bad processes, but the company sought an upgrade. Images: Franke

You might not have heard of kitchen equipment manufacturer Franke, although it has a big presence in the U.S. The bulk of its products are designed and built for commercial applications—kitchen equipment at the back of the house, serving lines at the front of the house—and its residential kitchen lines aren’t sold in traditional retail stores. If you were to pop into a commercial kitchen, or if you were to take a close look at a serving line at a buffet-style restaurant, you might spot Franke’s brand of sinks, food preparation tables, water filtration systems, warming tables, serving lines, coffee machines, and disposals. If you were to visit the showroom of a high-end residential kitchen supplier, you might see its faucets, sinks, and accessories, which are more than functional and aesthetically pleasing; everything is designed to work in harmony to make organization, use, and cleanup as effortless as possible.

Although it’s a large company, employing more than 10,000 people in manufacturing facilities on five continents, it’s not necessarily a high-volume manufacturer. Some of its production work comprises the low-volume, high-mix mode of a fabrication shop rather than the traditional high-volume, low-mix work of an OEM.

“A volume of 10 is a big quantity for us,” said Doug Frederick, production supervisor at the company’s location in Fayetteville, Tenn. “We might make one food prep table and then not make another one of that design for three months.”

Some of these parts are tubes. Until recently, the company got by with manual fabrication processes for its tubular components. Cutting to length on a saw and drilling to make holes on a drill press weren’t bad processes, but the company sought an upgrade.

A One-stop Shop

A sheet metal fabricator would be at home in Franke’s Fayetteville location. The company makes a multitude of parts that go into the equipment it makes, mainly for the fast-food industry, including work tables, griddle hoods, storage cabinets, and warming stations. Franke uses sheet lasers for cutting, press brakes for bending, and seam welders to make the long corner welds.

At Franke, tube fabrication is a small but still substantial portion of the work. Tube products include legs for the work tables, supports for canopies, and supports for the sneeze guards that protect salad bars and other self-serve areas.

A second aspect to Franke’s business model is that it quotes entire commercial kitchens. It writes quotes to deliver everything needed to store, prepare, and serve the food, as well as wash the serving trays. It doesn’t make everything, so it quotes other manufacturers’ freezers, refrigerators, griddles, and dishwashers. Meanwhile, other kitchen integrators do the same thing, writing quotes that often include Franke equipment.

Because commercial kitchens often are in service 18 or more hours a day, seven days a week, the key to getting onto a preferred vendor list (and staying there) is to make reliable, sturdy equipment and delivering it on time, every time. Although Franke’s manual processes for fabricating tube were adequate, the supervisors in the Fayetteville location looked for something new.

“A saw needs a manual adjustment to make a 45-degree cut, and a drill press isn’t ideal for making holes in tube,” Frederick said. “The bit doesn’t always go straight through the center, so the two holes don’t always line up, and if we had to install a piece of hardware like a clinch nut, it wouldn’t always fit.” And while measuring with a tape measure and marking a hole location with a pencil aren’t a big deal, occasionally a worker in a hurry would mismark a hole location. The scrap rate and amount of rework weren’t substantial, but stainless steel is expensive, and nobody wants to rework a part, so the management team wanted to reduce these as much as possible.

Setting up a machine from 3D FabLight is just about as simple as it looks. It needs nothing more than a 120-V circuit (20 amps) and a desk or a stand for the controller. Because it’s a lightweight machine equipped with casters, relocating it is just as easy.

The company considered a machining center, but after a lengthy search, the Fayetteville staff just didn’t find what it was looking for. The staff was familiar with laser cutting from its sheet work, using four sheet lasers day in and day out, but a conventional tube laser was far more than it needed.

“We didn’t have enough volume to justify a big tube laser machine,” Frederick said. Then, while looking for equipment at a recent FABTECH expo, he found what he was looking for: a laser machine that fit Franke’s budget.

Simplicity in Laser Cutting

The system he discovered, designed and built by 3D Fab Light, is based on one overarching principle: simplicity. The company uses a design concept that is short on frills and long on ease of use.

The founders initially submitted the concept for a Defense Department initiative. While the bulk of repair work conducted by military personal involves replacing worn or broken components with replacement parts that come from OEMs, some military depots are tasked with making those replacement parts. Machining, fabricating, and welding are common activities at some military repair sites.

With this in mind, the two founders conceived of a lightweight laser cutting machine that needs no foundation and fits through standard commercial double doors. The system’s gantry and bed are aligned before delivery, and the machine needs no alignment after setup. It’s small enough to be packed into a shipping container, so it can be delivered to essentially any location, which is critical in getting such a machine delivered to a remote military base, where it’s most needed. Using less than 20 amps on a common 120-VAC circuit, the machines use about $1 per hour in electricity and shop air.

The company makes two models and provides a choice of three resonators. The FabLight Sheet handles one-quarter sheets, pieces that measure up to 50 by 25 in. The FabLight Tube & Sheet can handle the same size sheet plus tube from ½ to 2 in. OD in lengths up to 55 in. An optional extender accommodates tube up to 80 in.

The machine models—FabLight 1500, FabLight 3000, and FabLight 4500—correspond to wattages of 1.5, 3, and 4.5 kW. They are intended to cut materials up to 0.080, 0.160, and 0.250 in., respectively. The machines use fiber power sources and have two cutting modes, using the maximum power in pulse mode and 10% of the power in continuous mode. The continuous mode provides nicer edge quality and is intended for use on material thicknesses at the lower end of the machine’s capability. The pulse mode, which helps with the power budget, is for cutting material thicknesses at the high end.

Hassle-free Production without Programming

Franke’s investment in a FabLight 4500 Tube & Sheet produced benefits in both fabrication and assembly. Long gone are the days of making scrap by cutting parts too short, reworking parts that were cut too long, and misaligned holes. Second, the components go together smoothly, every time.

“The welders love it,” said Frederick. “All the holes are where they should be, and they’re all round.” Frederick and one former saw operator are the two people trained to use the new machine, and Frederick said that the training went smoothly. The former saw operator is an old-school fabricator, not too computer savvy and certainly not a digital native, but that doesn’t matter; the machine doesn’t require programming, as this video—for making a bottle opener—demonstrates. It imports common file formats, .dxf and .dwg, and then its CAM capability takes over. In 3D Fab Light’s case, CAM is really CAT, as in catalog. It relies on a material catalog, or database, that has cutting parameters for a great number of alloys and material thicknesses. After loading the file and selecting the material parameters, the operator can look at an optional preview to see the finished part, then jog the cutting head to the starting location and start the cutting process.

Frederick found one drawback: Franke’s part drawings aren’t in either of the formats used by the machine. He sought some assistance within the company, but in a big firm, these things take time, so he asked 3D Fab Light for a template for a tube drawing, received one, and modified it to make the part he needed. “It was incredibly easy,” he said. “It takes three or four minutes to modify a drawing template to make a part.”

Setting up the machine also was a breeze, according to Frederick. “The hardest part was unpacking the crate,” he quipped. Because the system is equipped with wheels, moving it to its intended location was simply a matter of rolling it across the floor.

“We got it to the right position, plugged it in, connected the vacuum cleaner, and it was ready to go,” he said.

Furthermore, the machine’s simplicity helps in troubleshooting when things don’t go quite as planned, Frederick added.

“When we have trouble, Jackie [the operator] often can diagnose the problem and get it running again,” Frederick said. Even so, he credits 3D Fab Light’s attention to detail in this area as well.

“Even when we start a service ticket and later let them know that we resolved the issue on our own, often within 48 hours I receive a follow-up e-mail from the company. Customer service is a big part of our satisfaction with the machine.”

And although Frederick didn’t tally any metrics to determine the time to return on investment, he estimated it to be less than two years based solely on the operation of the machine, and less when figuring in scrap reduction.