Kerf Developments wins UK and Ireland flagship dealer status for Burny & Kaliburn control systems

Kerf is the UK and Ireland's primary manufacturer of high density plasma cutting and oxy-fuel cutting equipment. Says the company's managing director, Dan Taylor: "We have been continually evolving our products and are conscious that service and support is a key element of any solution. To this end, we have worked closely with Burny & Kaliburn to integrate their products into our machines. We have committed our staff to extensive and ongoing training on the Burny, Kaliburn and Inova range of control systems, plasma systems and torch height control units." This continuous training program sees Kerf staff undergoing regular internal training as well as training at Burny in Germany on the latest software and product updates. As the UK and Ireland's largest installer of Burny and Kaliburn systems, the benefit to the customer is the expertise and service levels available from Kerf. This service level is guaranteed by Kerf's investment in remote diagnostic support for customers. It has invested heavily in computer and networking software to provide this feature to its customers, so the end user has a plasma cutting machine that can be remotely interrogated by Kerf engineers to maximise uptime and eliminate costly, time consuming downtime and engineer call-outs. UK managing director for Burny-Kaliburn, Chris Desmond, adds: "We supply our systems to a number of plasma machine manufacturers and Kerf is clearly the most pro-active, with respect to training, service and support, spare part supply and providing an overall package to its end users. "One clear example of this is Kerf's extensive stock holding of consumables and spare parts. Kerf can supply its customers with spares and parts within 24 hours. This stockholding commitment highlights how Kerf customers benefit over manufacturers with alternate plasma cutting machines." Kerf even offers support for the Burny range of products that date back to the company's UK entry in the late 1980s. Legacy products such as the Burny 2.5, 3, 5 and 10, which have been superseded by new products, are still supported by Kerf. Mr Desmond continues: "Many OEMs offer little or no support for ageing machines, as the product knowledge, expertise and spare part availability is often very limited. Kerf has invested heavily in providing full support for machines that are supplied by alternate vendors with Burny-Kaliburn and legacy systems, whereas the OEMs that originally supplied the machine may have no UK support facility and, in many instances, have not kept up to date with existing product developments, let alone systems that may be over 30 years old." Highlighting the importance of this support, Kerf's Mr Taylor says: "We have invested heavily in our after sales service, as well as our retrofitting department. The ability to retrofit new control and plasma systems to old machines is increasingly common in the existing economic climate. Workshops with old machines want to increase their productivity without the cost of new plant. By retrofitting a new control system and replacing ageing machine elements, we can breathe life into an old machine. Additionally, it extends our customer base for spares, service, consumables and also new machine sales." Note: Burny Kaliburn joined the Lincoln Electric family last November