Page 80: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (June 2003)

process. In cutting two-in. steel with oxy-fuel, you ^ would need to put the flame on the sur- face for about 30 seconds before hitting the cutting oxygen jet to make the pierce. Whereas with the LASOX

Differential Pressure

Gauge For Seawater

Applications

Mid-West Instrument's Model 120 Series "FilterMinder" piston type differential gauge is specially designed for seawater applications. "

For protection. * the 120 gauge JjM^ri& materials include aluminum bronze •m^HHV or monel. ^^^BflAr process, because the laser heats the sur- face instantaneously to the ignition tem- perature, as soon as you turn the laser on, you can turn on the gas stream and start piercing," explained Gabzdyl.

In January 2001, Gabzdyl and O'Neill were invited to present their findings on

LASOX at a meeting at Caterpillar in

Peoria, 111. "We turned everything on its head. We explained that the laser is not the important thing, it's actually the gas that does the trick. This astonished the laser community there, because they tend to be very laser-centric people who feel that the laser is always the most important thing," recalled Gabzdyl. "It definitely caught my eye," said Cahill, referring to the presentation. Later that

Benefits Include: • Range: 0-5 PSID thru 0-100 PSID (0.3 bar to 7.0 bar) • Accuracy + 5°o full scale ascending • Weather resistant construction standard • Working pressure 5000 P.S.I.G. (340 bar)

Over-range protection to rated working pressure

Dial size: 2-1/2", 3-1/2". or 4-1/2" round

Shatter resistant lens

For more information contact: Mid-West

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Tel: (586) 254-6500 • Fax: (586) 254-6509

Web Site: www.midwestinstrument.com

E-Mail:[email protected]

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Circle 320 on Reader Service Card 80 evening, Gabzdyl, O'Neill, Cahill of

Bender Shipbuilding and Penn of

Alabama Lasers had discussions with the view to establishing this process in the shipbuilding industry.

In February 2001, Cahill pulled together the team of Bender

Shipbuilding, Alabama Laser and BOC

Gases, and wrote a proposal to the

National Shipbuilding Research

Program, (NSRP). "The proposal got selected and we moved forward. Less than a year after we started real work on it, we were using LASOX in produc- tion. We went from the laboratory to production at almost lightning speed," said Cahill.

Penn, who serves as president of

Alabama Laser agreed. "What we brought to the equation was taking

LASOX out of the lab and making it work on the industrial floor. There's a big difference in doing something once in a lab and doing it a thousand times on the industrial floor," he said. "I've been working with lasers for 30 years and every now and then I see a quantum leap and LASOX fits into that category."

Penn continued: "An important aspect of LASOX that isn't often mentioned is its ability to do intricate detail even on thick plate. We've been able to cut webs that just can't be achieved with other methods. The LASOX process supplies just enough heat to drive the reaction and a lot of that heat energy is removed through the kerf. Plasma cannot do the square cuts that allows you to do com- mon line cutting with feature detail and a minimum heat for the part with a min- imum amount of distortion, those fea- tures alone solve certain categories of problems. This is a tool to give you more capability, not a tool to displace other technologies. It gives someone that is going to invest a million dollars in a laser system with a new tool. It allows him to cut thicker plate without having to go out and buy a plasma or oxyfuel system and making a lot of redundancy and using up a lot more floor space."

According to Pat Cahill of Bender, "LASOX is going to completely change the way people look at lasers as a cut- ting tool," said Cahill. "We're saving hours and hours of machine shop time because we're able to cut holes that are of machine quality. In the past we would cut the blanks out with an oxy-burner and take them to the machine shop and drill them." "LASOX has an almost zero kerf angle, an inch and a half material with less than one degree of a kerf angle. So you have a straight edge. It has almost no top edge melting at all."

Turn to page 89 for updates on the latest Welding and

Cutting Technologies

Maritime Reporter & Engineering News