LaserMate Systems has provided excerpts from an article published in the Canadian Industrial Publishing FAB Canada /July 2002

Royal Laser Tech on Clairville Road in Toronto is one of two Royal Laser plants specializing in industrial work. This work involves short-run production and job shop type for bus & truck manufacturers, military, agricultural, etc.
“As a job shop,” says General Manager Robert Watson, “we are capable of reacting to a wide variety of jobs for a few months, and then suddenly it is gone and we moved on to the next short-run job.” “We deal with a variety of materials,” says Watson,
“including mild steel up to 3/4 of an inch, a great deal of aluminum work for the military, and cosmetic and fixture work, most of which is stainless steel. Approximately 80-85 percent of the work that comes in the door gets touched by a laser,” says Watson. “Our runs vary in size from one part to a maximum of 40,000 parts a year. Since most of our machines are CNC-controlled, automation is an issue but it is somewhat less fulfilling or beneficial than, say, for a long-run manufacturer.

Our Trumpf lasers are lined up side by side with a new LaserMate materials handling system mounted directly overhead.

Since these lasers do job shop work, full automation wasn’t appropriate. This system is basically just a load system and it has a five shelf rack positioned beside the first machine. The racks are loaded with approximately a shift and a half of inventory to ensure the machines will almost run continuously through a full shift.   Beam time has increased by approximately 9 percent since this system has been installed. Another benefit of this loading system is that we have considerably less waste on cosmetic work because it places the work gently on the laser table, instead of sliding it with a forklift.

Prior to the installation of the LaserMate system, the three Trumpf lasers were positioned a much greater distance apart because the machine loading was a combination of jib crane and fork lifts between each laser. The LaserMate system has not only freed up a great deal of floor space, it also improved the safety of the work area because the forklifts no longer needed to be there. Productivity has also definitely improved.”

We would also like to be able to monitor the progress of our manufacturing in real time, machine by machine and eliminate the need for operators to input each batch of work they produce. In a job shop environment where job sizes and materials vary so much, the type of automation that would have the biggest impact would be for material storage, more so than on the machines. Right now, automation in the plant is essential but in our environment it’s impact is more beneficial in a few isolated areas, than throughout the plant.