CP Composites turns to Zund in order to upgrade to a faster and more advanced digital cutter: the Zund S3 L-1600.
CP Composites was established in August 2011 in the town of Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, an area well-known for composite laminating and motorsports manufacturing.
The company began processing composite parts for the Le Mans LMP1 and LMP2 cars and as its reputation for excellent service spread, new customers came onboard from other motorsport sectors, including World Rally Championship and Formula 1. In 2015, CP Composites moved to its current site on the Stukeley Business Centre in Huntingdon. Today, the company specialises in the wider automotive industry from ‘super cars’ to WRC and F1. However, the scope of production doesn’t stop there.
With the business progressing with more specialist work, CP Composites needed to upgrade to a faster and more advanced digital cutter. The company’s Exact machine was a great piece of equipment, but had its limitations.
“We found ourselves getting behind in jobs and we felt we could improve on our efficiency through updated hardware and nesting software,” begins CP Composites’ managing director, Brian Cooper. “We contacted Zund because of their relationship and understanding of our old Exact machine and decided to purchase a Zund S3 L-1600 with the help of a combined authority capital grant.”
Since the installation of the Zund S3 L-1600, CP Composites has seen huge benefits of the new Zund cutter within the business.
“Our productivity has easily improved by 20% and our material efficiency usage has never been better,” notes Cooper. “We have found so many small gains which has improved the overall process. For example, in the past we would need to visually set the blade depth and at times, ended up cutting into the bed. This created more problems because the loose belt fibres would end up cross contaminating the prepreg materials. But now this is done by the S3 cutter using a smart Integrated Tool Initialisation function. This enables automatic blade initialisation allowing for optimum cutting depth setting, making the process far quicker and precise.”
CP Composites also opted for a front extension table on its Zund S3 L-1600, which allows more working area for their operators.
“The cutting bed size on the previous Exact cutter was smaller, meaning the cutter could only process smaller prepreg rolls and we had no working area,” Cooper concludes. “This made picking small composite parts very difficult. The operators at CP Composites have also found the new nesting software much faster.”
