The biggest laser of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere is set to help an Australian surface engineering company double production.
LaserBond has been using thermal coating techniques to produce hard-wearing components and products for the mining, power generation, manufacturing and agriculture industries since 1992. But a downturn in the mining industry is helping to fuel demand for its products as companies look to maximise productivity. LaserBond Chairman Allan Morton said the company's laser-applied coatings typically tripled the life of a product.
- This is effectively 3D printing using industrial robots and industrial lasers to add material to existing substrates to create better performing products, he said.
- The economic benefit is not so much that the components are lasting longer, its that you don't have to shut the system down to change components so they're getting longer cycles out and that has ramifications in the workplace health and safety area as well.
- When everything was going fine in our boom times people said we will not pay that because even though we might have four times the life we might be double the price but now companies are looking at costs and the cost of downtime overwhelms any incremental cost of a higher-performing component that we supply.
We've said our day will come at the bottom of the cycle.
Founded in New South Wales, the company has about 65 staff and has had a plant in South Australia since 2013.
It has recently formed a research collaboration with the University of South Australia's Future Industries Institute and is establishing a new laser cell in Adelaide featuring a 16kW laser, which it hopes to have up and running in September...
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