In 1910, C.R. Ellicot of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company and W.L. Conwell of the Safety Car ­Heating & Lighting Company together with J.J. Sinclair of the Westinghouse Electric Company formed Ellcon in New York State to manufacture and supply products to the railroad industry.  Ellcon product lines included diaphragms, step boxes, and safety treads for steam engines and stanchions, handrails, and hollow metal doors for passenger and subway cars.

Thirty years later, Ellcon bought the National Brake Company of Buffalo, NY, which manufactured emergency hand brakes for the railroad industry. The two companies later merged to form Ellcon-National, and by 1991, the company moved to a new headquarters and manufacturing facility in Greenville, South Carolina.

Continued growth and expanded product lines were behind the company building a second plant in 1998 across the street from the main plant. “We produce a lot of products,” says Chris Tomaszewski, supervisor of laser operations and a 17-year employee. The company still mainly serves the railroad industry, producing a complete line of braking products for freight trains and many other components for passenger cars and commercial vehicles.

“As a company, we started investigating lasers for production about 10 years ago,” says Tomaszewski, who not only supervises laser operations but does all of the programming, too. The part that started the investigation was a belly-mounted slack adjuster, a pneumatic brake-like mechanism for keeping rail cars tightly together and evenly spaced. The main component consists of a 3.58-inch diameter steel tube at 0.188-inch wall thickness and roughly 55 inches long. Ellcon-National’s production process for the part consisted of nine different operations on mechanical and ­pneumatic punch presses with five different die changes. “Making 600 units a week took four guys working 60-hour weeks,” Tomaszewski says.

Strong and continued product demand forced the company to begin looking for faster and better production alternatives. Plasma cutting would eliminate the dies and punches necessary in punch presses, but it was not deemed sufficient in cut quality. Waterjet cutting was investigated, but was deemed too expensive and the process lacked a reliable rotational axis. “We absolutely needed 6th-axis capability, not only for processing tube but also for other products that required angled or beveled cuts,” Tomaszewski explains.

Laser cutting was determined to be the best fit for the company’s needs, and Ellcon’s initial purchase at the time consisted of a 2D laser-cutting machine with shuttle table and tube-cutting option. At the time, getting it up and running necessitated the supplier writing a custom tube program for the company.

By 2005, Ellcon was looking for another laser to keep up with part demand. This time, the company investigated and purchased a 2,500 watt SpaceGear-U44 system from Mazak Optonics Corporation. “The rotational C-axis was there and the 6th-axis capability eliminated bandsaw operations for other brake products of ours and cylinder/saddle-type parts in general,” Tomaszewski says.

The versatility of the SpaceGear-U44 includes 2D plate laser-cutting and 3D part-processing capabilities. The compact cutting head designed for 3D workpieces minimizes interference and enhances high speeds in corners or in pipe processing. Only three program lines are required for simultaneous 6-axis processing, such as cutting tight-fitting joints in square or round tubes.

The 2,500 watt CO2 laser is powerful enough to cut different materials and thicknesses without changing lenses or nozzles. Rapid traverse rate is 945 ipm and maximum cutting feedrate is 591 ipm.

Demand for Ellcon-National’s products continues strong, and although the SpaceGear-U44 was acquired to keep up, the added efficiency created by eliminating other operations increased production by close to 100 percent. In the case of the belly-mounted slack adjusters, what took four operators working 60-hour weeks on multiple punch presses is accomplished by one laser operator in a 40-hour week, saving more than $100,000 per year.

“Tolerances are tighter on a lot of our products because of the laser’s precision,” Tomaszewski adds. “We robotically weld a lot of parts, and the weld prep quality is better by leaps and bounds. We don’t have to grind any broken edges; as a matter of fact we regularly hold plus or minus 0.005.”

Responsible for laser programming, Tomaszewski is also a fan of the Space Gear U44’s CNC and 3D software. “The 3D ­package is very user friendly and speeds up print-to-part time by one-half,” he says. “With the knowledge and technology tables in the control, a lot of the legwork is done for you. Real-time changes happen on the fly, so there’s no need for shutdowns and redials. Then it’s back to the default settings and back to work.”

Ellcon-National is a big bulk-steel user, so the speed and efficiency of laser cutting and programming pays a lot of benefits. “On a regular day, we’re going through between 300 and 400 tubes, and in a given month, we cut between 30 and 40 three-eights sheets and 90 to 100 seven-gauge sheets,” Tomaszewski says.

Despite such a large workload, there’s still room for an entire eight-hour shift of work capacity on Ellcon-National’s Space Gear U44. “We’re making parts out of cutouts generated on our other machine,” Tomaszewski says. “Say we have a 10-inch round dropping out of the nest on our other machine. With the nozzle-start capabilities on the Mazak, we’re making parts out of material already written off on another job.”

“We absolutely needed 6-axis ­capability, not only for processing tube but for other products that required angled or beveled cuts. ”
 
 
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