The Problem:

Boon Edam, Inc. has been manufacturing quality revolving doors for more than 100 years. In addition to revolving doors, the company’s product line now includes security doors, security portals, and security turnstiles for customers around the world including business offices, restaurants, hotels, banks and other financial institutions. Boon Edam can provide a reliable solution for virtually any type of pedestrian or vehicle entrance control application. And that expansive product line produces plenty of manufacturing challenges. Recently the company was looking to reduce production time on certain projects and decrease the need for outside vendors.

The Solution:

Boon Edam’s manufacturing engineer Jim Sheehan is always on the lookout for the best technology to improve productivity. One solution he recently discovered was ESAB’s waterjet/plasma combination cutting gantry,

“We knew we had applications for plasma, waterjet and laser,” Sheehan says. “We considered all the possibilities. Laser was a significantly higher cost and required high volume to be economical. We started looking at plasma and waterjet and knew that ESAB offered the combination.”

The machine they selected is an ESAB HydroCut LR 14. This is a low rail, large gantry waterjet machine that can be equipped with up to four waterjet heads, as well as multiple plasma or other process tools. HydroCut offers cutting widths from 8 to 20 feet with almost unlimited length. The gantry features welded, stress relieved, reinforced components, machined mating surfaces, precision planetary gearboxes to provide smooth, precise machine motion, and an independent reinforced deck that supports all auxiliary equipment without placing any additional torsional forces on the main beam. HydroCut can be equipped with ESAB’s Vision™ 52 Computer Numerical Control for optimal motion and process control. Process control for any material can be set up by simply selecting the material type and thickness.

Much of the work done on the HydroCut at Boon Edam was formerly jobbed to outside vendors. For example, the ceiling on the revolving doors is usually made from a series of “ceiling pies” – wedge-shaped pieces that are assembled on a track around the perimeter of the door. These pies often contain small speaker holes, usually 1/4 inch in diameter and arranged in circular sets of 12 holes per speaker with a 2.5 inch total diameter per speaker. These pies were formerly sent to a laser cutting shop that cut the pies and the holes. Because of the long lead time to get these parts made, Boon Edam had to inventory the parts. They also had to pay to ship the material to the laser cutter and pay again to ship back the finished parts. It all added up to considerable cost in time and money. Today, these parts are cut on the waterjet machine as they are needed, reducing the lead time from almost two weeks to just one day and allowing for quick customization.

The biggest advantage of having plasma and waterjet on the same cutting gantry is that intricate holes can be cut with waterjet and less critical cuts, such as outside perimeters, can be cut much faster with plasma, without shifting the plate from machine to machine. Boon Edam takes advantage of this capability when cutting galvanized sealing plates on its turnstiles. The plate is cut with plasma, and four critical holes within the plate are cut with waterjet. This again was a piece that had formerly been sent to an outside laser vendor and then punched in-house. The piece had a two-week lead time. Now this high volume part can be totally cut in-house, and the cut quality is significantly superior to punching, according to Sheehan.

The programming capabilities of the machine have also been an asset. Boon Edam offers aluminum custom canopies in three different heights. These were cut with a milling machine or a table saw, and quality and safety were issues. “Now we can put the width into the program and the water jet will cut the piece to the exact height needed,” Sheehan says. Steel components for doors and turnstyles formerly purchased from an outside vendor are now done in-house. “The flexibility of being able to input a CAD file and drive it through the post processor to output it to the machine is just great,” he adds.

Waterjet expanded Boon Edam’s manufacturing capabilities because it can cut non-metallic materials, such as a Baltic birch laminate for the doors. These were often a problem in the past but the waterjet has improved the quality and decreased the time to cut these parts. “Higher quality at much lower cost is always a good thing,” Sheehan notes.

The waterjet’s ability to cut plastic was put to use to create custom crating to ship the final doors. “We can cut custom geometries to cradle the door wings extremely fast,” Sheehan notes. “We were spending a lot of time and materials on crating. Now the wood and plastic are cut very fast. It has really reduced time on crate building and improved the survivability of our product in shipping.”

Sheehan is also impressed with ESAB’s remote support. The company can log in through a modem, take control of the machine, and quickly diagnose and fix a problem. This was a huge help on a recent project. “The job had to go out that day. We were able to solve the problem and get the job out, plus we were able to learn so we could fix that problem in the future. This remote support has been fantastic in helping us up the learning curve,” he said.

Sheehan feels that Boon Edam has not yet reached the limit of what they can achieve with the capabilities of the waterjet/plasma machine. “I’ve managed a lot of capital projects,” Sheehan says. “This waterjet/plasma project, with all the capabilities and support from ESAB, allowed us to meet and exceed our applications and ROI requirements. Implementing a new technology like this that expands your capabilities as much as this machine has is very gratifying.”