Precision engineering company, Sharp & Tappin used last year’s Advanced Engineering Show to showcase its new Compcut 200 advanced composite plate saw designed to cut multiple test specimens. Composites in Manufacturing reports.
Last year’s Advanced Engineering Show, held at the NEC saw the launch of a new advanced composite plate saw by Devon-based design and development engineers, Sharp & Tappin.
The Compcut 200 represents Sharp & Tappin’s developing interest in the growing home market for the precision cutting of composites. This new machine has been carefully designed to offer Composite R&D teams and test centres affordable access to an easy-to-use yet sophisticated and robust plate saw.
Offering a host of features, including compact size with small footprint, a high quality of surface finish allowing immediate testing and excellent perpendicularity and parallelism, The Compcut 200 also provides automatic material positioning and clamping, the ability to run multiple specimen cuts and a fully-enclosed work area to ensure user safety.
“Our long experience of tackling the challenges of composite machining and taking a good look at the market, convinced us that there was a niche for a unit like the Compcut 200,” states Sharp & Tappin’s managing director, Ben Sharp. “We are confident that the 200 offers a tremendous range of features and benefits at an affordable price, is easy to use with a minimum of operator training yet capable of consistently delivering very high-quality cuts.”
In addition to the Compcut 200, Sharp & Tappin’s Compcut 500 offers a cleared panel size of 600 x 600mm for medium to large laminate sizes and test specimens, whilst its Compcut 1000 provides a cleared panel size of 1,200 x 1,200mm for larger laminate sizes and test specimens.
Ringing endorsements
Sharp & Tappin’s expertise in precision composite cutting is also highly appreciated by its customers. Paul Yeo, technical director at Composite Test & Evaluation (CTE) commented: “Our Compcut saws give us the ability to quickly and repeatedly produce high quality test specimens with a near zero scrap rate. In reality, the resulting specimens exceed the requirements of the common International standards.”
Above all, the machines are very simple to use and it’s not necessary to be an experienced CNC machinist to operate the unit. With minimal training, operators will be producing accurate specimens.
“The Compcut saws offer the ability to quickly and repeatedly produce high quality test specimens with a near zero scrap rate,” Sharp continues. “In fact, we recently machined 240 laminates into 3,840 specimens for a variety of types and didn’t lose one specimen due to being out of tolerance. In reality, the specimens from the Compcut saw exceed the requirements of the common International standards that we perform testing to.”
The latest generation Compcut saws can manufacture specimens to such a high-quality edge finish that no post preparation of the specimens’ edges to remove machining marks is required. This significantly reduces the amount of preparation time, which offers customers significant cost and timescale benefits.
In the case of the 3,840 specimens mentioned previously, it has saved up to four weeks of labour and programme time not having to perform any post preparation after machining, which represent significant savings in cost and time for the customer.
“The machines are very simple to use and you don’t need to be an experienced CNC machinist to be able to operate one,” Sharp concludes. “I would say that within one hour of training, you will be producing specimens.
“As I tell our customers, the test results are only as good as the specimens you test. The Sharp & Tappin Compcut saws produce specimens to the very highest standard that nothing on the market we’ve found come close to.”
