One of Britain’s largest stockholders of engineering plastics, ENSINGER Ltd, is providing faster delivery of more accurate cut pieces to its customers following the company’s investment in a Missler DEB 540ce bandsaw from KASTO, Milton Keynes.

Installed in September 2009 at ENSINGER’s headquarters and main distribution centre in Tonyrefail, South Wales, the 540 mm capacity saw is resulting in at least a 10 per cent increase in yield from each length of stock that is cut, according to Steve Tipples, Director & General Manager.

In very exceptional cases, up to 40 per cent of some materials are saved from being scrapped. With 60 to 70 per cent of the company’s plastic stock at Tonyrefail sawn into millions of pieces every year, savings are considerable, especially with some materials costing more than £100 per kilogram.

Bar, tube, profile and plate from mid size up to 500 mm across were previously cut using an ageing bandsaw on which the blade tended to wander, producing a wavy cut surface. Typically, it meant that if ten pieces could theoretically be cut from a length of stock, in practice only nine might be produced at times due to material loss between the cuts.

A further drawback was that sometimes the billet ends had to be planed flat by hand to within the customer’s specification, incurring extra labour and energy costs as well as increasing lead time from order to delivery.

All of these problems have been solved by the arrival of the Missler ‘deb 540 ce’ bandsaw. ENSINGER can therefore once again quickly and reliably cut to size.

Moreover, much closer tolerances can now be held. This can save the user time and money by not having to machine the cut faces, which adds further value to the service provided by ENSINGER.