A producer of engineered tubing benefits from its switch from manual to CNC cold sawing.
Above: Swagelok Oklahoma | West Texas purchased the Scotchman CPO 315 Roller Feed Automatic cold saw when it upgraded from a manual to a CNC saw.
January 2023- A producer of engineered tubing benefits from its switch from manual to CNC cold sawing.
The late Fred A. Lennon founded Swagelok Co., now headquartered in Solon, Ohio, in 1947 and insisted on establishing and maintaining quality, integrity, respect for the individual and customer focus as its core values, according to the company’s website. Swagelok Oklahoma | West Texas is an authorized Swagelok sales and service center, and the independent distributor also adheres to those values, says Lonnie Kerr, director of custom solutions for the Broken Arrow, Oklahoma-based company.
Swagelok Oklahoma | West Texas saws, deburrs and bends engineered tubing and has operated a CPO 350 manual cold saw from Scotchman Industries Inc. in Philip, South Dakota, since 2013. When the distributor decided to upgrade to a CNC saw in the summer of 2021, Kerr evaluated several brands and then purchased another Scotchman saw: the CPO 315 Roller Feed Automatic cold saw.
“The reason that I specified Scotchman was the alignment of their values to what Swagelok values are. The fact that they are domestically manufactured is a big deal for us personally. Those were the main factors,” he says.
The distributor cuts tubes from 1/8 inch to 2 inches, primarily grades 316 and 304 stainless steel but also Hastelloy and Monel 400, Kerr says. “Our main focus is ¼-inch stainless steel seamless tubing up to 1-inch stainless steel seamless tubing. That’s kind of our sweet spot.”
He adds that the company purchased the CNC cold saw from Hull Machine Tools Inc., an authorized Scotchman distributor in Oklahoma City, whose president is Harold Hull. “His expertise—plus Scotchman’s— made it a pretty easy decision,” Kerr says.
EXPERIENCE IN ACTION
At Scotchman, Kerr says he relies on Scott Olivier, cold saw product manager and a company veteran for four decades, as his go-to guy. “Just a gem of human being and more helpful than he knows.”
Once the CNC cold saw arrived at the distributor’s facility and was set up, Kerr says Olivier conducted an “awesome” training session over two days. “The guys were in a comfortable state where they could ask questions, and Scott had the patience of Job where he would field those questions, answered them and made sure that everybody was up to speed.”
Kerr adds that the CNC saw, with its touchscreen control, is easy to operate. It is also easy to change wear parts when needed, such as the rubber and fixed steel rollers and saw blades, because the machine is ergonomically designed. Based on Scotchman’s recommendation, Swagelok Oklahoma | West Texas stocks spare wear parts.
If the distributor doesn’t have a particular roller in stock, Kerr says Scotchman can quickly supply it because the saw builder manufactures rollers, too. “We were happy to know that we wouldn’t have any supply chain issues.”
Whereas the manual cold saw applied flood coolant, which creates issues with shop cleanliness and coolant-laden chips, especially when sawing small-diameter workpieces, the CPO 315 directs mist coolant at the tool/ workpiece interface, Kerr explains. The main benefit of the minimal quantity lubrication (MQL) compared with the option of cutting dry is that latter method extends blade life. “The fact that we’re using around 1 cc of coolant per cut is super helpful.”
The infeed table supply track is a standard feature on the CPO 315 RFA cold saw.
One option Kerr says he is glad he ordered, without realizing its full benefit at the time, is the supply table, or rack, on the roller feed automatic cold saw. The supply table enables raw stock loading of material lengths from as little as 30 inches up to 24 feet. The CPO 315 RFA can also be equipped with a full bundle loading attachment.
According to Scotchman, either system allows the saw to automatically load, trim, cut and sort lengths and hold tolerances of ±0.006 inches in lengths of tubing up to 3 inches in diameter.
“We didn’t realize we were going back and forth from a crate of tubing and doing one at a time,” says Kerr. “At any moment I can stack 1,200 feet of ¼ inch, 900 feet of 3/8 inch, 600 feet of ½ inch and 300 feet of ¾ inch tubing. And the calibration of the cutting itself is super simple and extremely reliable and accurate. Basically, the only manual feature on the saw is setting the cut length, but if you’re doing several cut lengths of a common diameter, the ease of operation and accuracy and reliability is incredible,” he says.
The CPO 315 RFA cold saw is well-suited for high-volume and long-length applications that require accurate and clean cuts, according to Scotchman Industries.
AVOIDING BOTTLENECKS
Kerr estimates that the company is pushing four to six cuts per minute and has gauged the capacity of its bending process around what the saw can do. “If we can cut four to six [tubes], we can deburr four to six and then we can bend four to six and it really fits with what we’re trying to achieve from cradle to grave with that engineered tube.”
The distributor still operates the manual cold saw at its 3,600-square-foot Broken Arrow facility as needed, Kerr says, with a utilization rate of less than 5 percent while the CNC saw is in operation about 60 percent of the time during each shift. “We also have three other branches and once we get to good spot, we’re going to move that manual saw to one of our other branches.” Those branches are in Yukon, Oklahoma, and Amarillo and Odessa, Texas.
Kerrs adds that Swagelok Oklahoma | West Texas is considering adding more sawing equipment at Broken Arrow and Scotchman is at the top of the list of vendors. “We’re looking at their entire line, using their saw as a barometer for the kind of company, the kind of quality and the kind of reliability that we get from Scotchman.”
The views and comments expressed are those of Swagelok Oklahoma | West Texas, not of Swagelok Co. Swagelok Oklahoma | West Texas is an authorized sales and service center for Swagelok Co. -FFJ
