Above: Since installing the Koike Aronson Mastergraph EX2, American Alloy Steel is able to take on new work such as beveling edges for cylinders.

January 2019 - There was an advertising campaign back in the 1970s for one of the Hostess brands, extolling the snack as “two taste treats in one.” Certainly, the campaign was effective and kids begged their parents for this product.

Fast forward nearly 50 years and you’ll find manufacturing companies wanting to perform two or more tasks on one machine. So along comes the Mastergraph EX2 from Koike Aronson, built with multiple plasma stations, oxy-fuel stations, marking options as well as full contour plasma beveling, all controlled by a single operator.

A company that is thoroughly convinced about the effectiveness of the Mastergraph EX2 is American Alloy Steel Inc. The Houston-based processor and distributor has nearly a dozen service centers across North America, ships coast-to-coast and exports to Latin America, the Far East, Middle East, Europe and Australia.

Using all the tools on the Mastergraph EX2, American Alloy Steel cuts holes and bevels edges on heavy carbon steel plate.

“We have had Koike Aronson plate cutting machines in our Rome, New York, warehouse for a number of years,” says Clay Young, general product manager. “Our Tulsa and Houston plants needed a machine that could plasma cut and bevel, along with oxy-fuel cutting capabilities—all in one machine,” he said.

Rome was the first to get the model. “Our plant manager there speaks very highly about its reliability and solid construction. Our various plant managers met in March 2017 and the decision was made to purchase cutting machines from one supplier, so that we would have uniformity of programming, thereby shortening our learning curve,” Young says.

This means all operators across all locations with this machine are programming it the same way. “In terms of accumulated knowledge, it’s advantageous to choose one machine,” he notes. Another advantage is “you don’t have to buy OEM parts” to perform maintenance. “Some parts you can buy from a hardware store, they’re easy to find.”

The company installed its second Mastergraph plasma with bevel head attachment and oxy-fuel cutting capabilities into service in January 2018 in Tulsa. “The managers in Tulsa were very favorably impressed with the speed with which we could now cut bevels, as well as the workmanship of the machine.”

AAS carries plate for pressure vessels, structural and military applications, including cylinder heads (below).

A third, installed in Houston last June, “has been a huge help cutting weld prep bevels. For example, bevel cuts are now being done in 20 minutes on the new Mastergraph that used to take two hours to straight-line cut by oxy-fuel.”

He says that already, American Alloy Steel, is able to handle much more cylinder business as the plates are cut with beveled edges, ready for rolling. 

Creating cylinders

Young explains the process. “We take a flat plate and roll it to make a cylinder and weld the seam up on it. We had a bottleneck on beveling the edges; generally the cylinder is welded on the ends, and you must cut a weld prep bevel on four sides in order to weld at the seams. The bevel fills in with weld filler. Heads or other shell sections are welded onto the cylinder ends. For instance, a 30-foot-long cylinder can be made from three 10-foot sections.”

Since installing the multitasking Mastergraph, “We’re able to more aggressively pursue that work.” The welding alone can be done by other companies that roll plate, “but most don’t have the cutting capacity.”

American Alloy is installing a Koike Aronson Mastergraph now at its brand-new Ogden, Utah, service center and has two more on order for Houston, which is undergoing an expansion for increase warehouse space by 20 percent.

The Mastergraph’s beveling capability presents another “area of potential growth; we could take in additional business. That bevel is a lot of inches of cutting. If you make a 10-foot-long by 10-foot-diameter cylinder, you need 32 feet of plate, which comes out to 84 feet of beveling. Plus, it will crank small parts out in a hurry. We are doing test cuts already for some potential business that we hadn’t previously participated in.”

When Koike sold American Alloys the Mastergraph and its particular configuration, “they said it cuts so fast, most people have trouble keeping the machine loaded. So what we did is had this machine (in Houston) traverse two bays so we could load it from two sides. We have two 45-foot-long tables with a 10-foot-long parking space in the middle.

“There is pent-up demand for plate processing equipment so this is what our business needed,” says AAS’s general product manager.

“Our plate is heavy, wide and long,” as much as 12 feet by 40 feet and up to 20 tons, Young continues. “Some of them are really large patterns.” So the company installed 107 linear feet of rail to move the material, in order to increase the efficiency of the machine.

Koike Aronson sends its own technicians to supervise installation, laying out the lines and bolting the pieces to the concrete floor. Training is part of the package “and we recently called Koike Aronson technicians back in for some additional training.”

Pent-up demand

American Alloy’s investment was well timed, says Young. “There is pent-up demand for plate processing equipment so this is what our business needed.”

Founded in 1971 and employing 265 people, American Alloy Steel carries many grades of plate for pressure vessel quality, structural and military applications. The Houston plant runs two shifts a day, and its new Mastergraph EX2 may run as long as 22 hours, including loading the machine.

“Since we stock many grades, thicknesses, and sizes of quality plate and bar stock that are not available in the marketplace we do a significant amount of business with numerous other service centers,” according to Young. In addition, OEM customers include refineries, petrochemical plants, power generating plants, steel plate fabricators, mining and other heavy equipment manufacturers, machine shops and general fabricating shops. 

“We have furnished material for numerous offshore drilling rigs and other offshore applications through the years. The military grades we sell can be found on U.S. Navy surface ships and submarines.” Recently, some of the company’s high-strength structural grades “found their way into the new Atlanta Falcons and Texas Rangers stadiums. There is literally not a continent where product from American Alloy Steel has not been shipped to.” MM