For years, aluminum has been one of the most popular building materials for commercial projects of every size, thanks to the fact that it’s lightweight, inexpensive, and durable. Being as strong as it is, however, you might expect that cutting aluminum on an industrial scale would be extremely difficult on the equipment doing the cutting.
While it’s true that fully automatic aluminum cutting comes with its own set of challenges, it’s not actually as insurmountably difficult as you might expect. As long as you have the correct equipment, calibrated in the correct way, you’ll find that you can cut vast quantities of aluminum at an impressive rate without too much additional difficulty.
Why Use Aluminum?
Aluminum has many benefits over other building materials. While pure aluminum isn’t especially strong, when it’s alloyed with other elements, such as copper or zinc, it becomes incredibly durable. In particular, it’s resistant to the corrosive effects of water as well as the damaging power of UV radiation. As a result, it’s a great metal if you’re looking for something weatherproof.
Aluminum is also lightweight, which among other benefits, makes it less expensive to construct with. It’s a lot easier to lift and move around. It’s non-flammable and energy efficient when used inside of buildings. Finally, it’s especially versatile when it comes to decorative uses. It can be colored in any number of different ways, meaning it can be used for essentially any construction need.
How to Automate the Job
Of course, if you really want to pick up the speed on an industrial-sized project, you’ll need to be able to automate it. Fully automatic aluminum cutting is really the only way to go if you want to remain competitive in the cutthroat world of manufacturing. Since you’ll be up against overseas companies that are always seeking to move in on your market, you’ll need access to the most advanced technology you can find to survive in the industry.
A high-powered automatic miter saw will go a long way to cut down on waste and render the job a good deal faster and more safely. You’ll want to opt for something that can be programmed with the lengths you want. Fully automatic also means that the saw can adjust itself and make the cuts you need, to your exact specifications, over and over.
Proper automation takes a great deal of the guesswork out of the job and also means that material can be cut by workers with a minimum of training. Instead of looking for workers who are already experts at cutting aluminum in an exacting way, you can use workers who simply need a bit of training on the automatic saw system and not much else.
A Few Automatic Saw Recommendations
Fully automatic aluminum cutting depends upon the right equipment, and we have a couple of recommendations for the best tools for the job, both made by TigerStop.
TigerSaw MiterXL
A fully automated push-feed system, the TigerSaw MiterXL is one of your best options when you need to cut aluminum quickly and accurately. It’s incredibly accurate and has a turn speed of three seconds, in which it can move from -45 to 45 degrees.
Featuring TigerLink 6 Cut List Downloading software, you can program plenty of different cuts into the system in order to juggle multiple projects if you need to. It also has other software that helps to maximize efficiency, such as Miter Process Optimization Software. The TigerTouch Touch Screen control makes it incredibly intuitive and easy to use, saving you a great deal of time and money on training. What training you do need is included with the cost of the machinery.
TigerSaw 2000
Another push-feeding saw system that’s excellent at cutting non-ferrous metals such as aluminum, this system, like many TigerStop products, features a fully enclosed saw system to maximize safety for workers. It even has an advanced dust collection system to cut down on time and money spent cleaning. An extremely heavy-duty saw system, the HeavyDuty 2 system can push up to 2,100 pounds of material; that’s a lot of aluminum.
The advanced software of the TigerSaw 2000 can report on statistics, helping you to keep track of the materials in real-time. Dynamic Optimization software also determines the order parts that need to be cut, further reducing waste. Once again, this is a fully automatic system that cuts down the work to a bare minimum that you and your workers need to put in and will also dramatically cut down on the amount of scrap material that’s left behind after the job is done.