What is the purpose of a precision leveler ? First of all, it is important to know that your parts can be deformed as a result of laser, plasma or punching operations. If this is the case, it is because the temperature contrast generated by this type of technology releases the stresses inherent in the metal. This causes the phenomenon of cambering, also known as tiling. Even worse, your sheets may be tiled or bent before the laser cutting process.
Although quite common, this phenomenon can be detrimental to your day-to-day production. Indeed, whether it is on sheet metal or on already cut parts, it can cause a loss of productivity in the order of 15 to 25%, or even more if you use welding robots.
In addition, touch-ups may be necessary in order to regain optimal flatness. These operations can generate a lot of scrap when it is impossible to recover the defect, causing a loss of profitability. This problem is all the more present as the length of the parts, or sheets, is important.
Rather than manually straightening your parts to meet your customers' requirements, you can optimize their stability with a simple leveling operation lasting about 2 minutes. The purpose of this operation is to subject the sheet or part to several alternating bending operations applied by small cross-section flattening rollers. The effect of these operations will be to eliminate residual stresses and obtain a perfectly flat part ready for machining in record time, without the need for time-consuming and damaging rework that would be detrimental to your profitability.
The efficiency of a precision leveler with servo-hydraulic motors
The gain in profitability can easily be calculated. For example, if you manually straighten 10,000 parts per year, an operation that can take up to 30 minutes per part, this means that your operators spend 5,000 hours a year straightening.
On the other hand, ifyou reduce the operation time to 2 minutes per piece, your operators will only spend 333 hours a year for a better end result. An exponential gain that doesn't even take into account the improvement in the stability of your parts, which will allow you to save time on each of the steps after cutting.
In general, 2 operators are required to perform manual straightening of parts. To sum up, they will cost you around 30 euros each per hour, i.e. a total of 60€/h x 5,000h = 300,000€ / year.
On the other hand, if you equip yourself with a precision leveler with servo-hydraulic motors, the operation will only cost you 60€/h x 333 h = 19 980€ per year. This means a potential gain of more than 280 000€ each year.
This is a theoretical example to illustrate our point. Everyone must indeed be aware of the importance of these deformation problems, and not hide the fact that the hidden costs are potentially significant.
Metal planers: A new partner of choice!
Of course, the SERVILASE team remains mobilized to help you to better understand this problem specific to thermal cutting and to precisely measure the impact in terms of costs.
In addition, we have recently moved closer to the company Roccia SRL and became the distributors for France. Based in Italy, this brand designs and manufactures a range of state-of-the-art levelers. We will be pleased to complete the information given in this article in order to offer you the machine that corresponds to your needs. And always with a quality/price ratio that is unbeatable on the market.
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