Existing floor area before preparation for the laser cutter
So this is where our new Trumpf 3030 3KW fiber laser cutter is going to go. The good news is that when we moved factory from all our small units in Mitchell Close to one building in Brunel Way we knew a laser cutter would be on the cards so we planned in the space to allow us to install one. The bad news was that the flooring wasn’t quite deep enough to take the machine so we have had to take the decision to reinforce the area that the new laser cutter will sit on. The laser cutter will sit next to our 2 Trumpf CNC punch presses enabling us to keep all sheet metal profile processing together. This should allow us to be more efficient in our material handling.
Cutting out concrete floor pad area
With help from Trumpf UK, our laser machine, CNC punch press and CNC press brake supplier, we surveyed the area and investigated several machine configurations before mapping out the size and position of floor that would need to be reinforced. After marking out the concrete floor it was cut out surprisingly accurately with disk cutters. The process was noisy (luckily we are used to that so it was ear defenders on again) and time consuming but it did mean we would get a good edge finish eventually.
Digging out the existing concrete
Once the floor area was cut out to the defined size it had to be broken up. The machine for this was the pecker which was used to break away the surface of the concrete from the middle of the floor back out to the sawed edges. We thought the disk cutting was noisy but this was another level but the builders got there in the end. Slow work but within a day they had cleared out all the old concrete and we were the proud owners of a rectangular hole in the ground!