The contract follows Dynashape’s recent supply of a new high-speed bandsaw for use in the teardown area, and the assistance it has given to Jaguar Land Rover in the development of its teardown cutting technologies.
While vehicle teardown is a far from new concept in quality control, the shift towards lightweight aluminium body components has brought a significant change in the way the teardown process is completed.
As a result of Jaguar Land Rover’s increasing use of aluminium body structures – the manufacturer is said to be a world-leader in the area of aluminium body construction – the teardown facility at Lode Lane has benefited from considerable investment as manufacturing has switched to aluminium, and has doubled in capability over the last few years.
Whereas spot-welded steel joints would previously have been cut for examination, today’s use of rivets demands that each riveted joint is examined individually for integrity. For a typical vehicle randomly selected for teardown at the Lode Lane facility, this could mean that as many as 4,000 joints have to be prepared for inspection.
Jaguar Land Rover group leader John Mackenzie explains: “Including the DoAll Zephyr high-speed vertical bandsaw supplied by Dynashape, we have a total of four bandsaws in the teardown area. Token-size jointed pieces of typically 2 cm square are cut using bandsaws, after which each rivet is cut down the centre using a diamond cutting disc machine, ready for microscopic analysis.”
With vehicle construction almost totally switching to aluminium, Jaguar Land Rover’s challenge was to find the most appropriate blade technology that would be suitable for use with today’s lightweight aluminium vehicle bodies, but could also be used for cutting steel when the requirement arose. Ninety percent of material cut is aluminium; the remainder is steel.
Mackenzie thanked the company for its help in supporting its switch to aluminium. He says: “Committed to helping us find the best bandsaw blade types for our machines, the Dynashape team carried out extensive cutting trials and provided us with a range of different blade types to try. This enabled us to identify the specific tooth configurations that best suited our cutting requirements, including occasional work with steel. I am delighted that following all [of its] hard work in meeting our saw blade requirements, Dynashape will also maintain our bandsaws.”
Dynashape managing director Chris Parkes adds: “Not only have we improved cut quality and blade life, but also, through carefully structured training sessions, we have given the teardown cell operators a much greater understanding of – and confidence in – the capabilities of the blade types they are now using.
“Although the new DoAll bandsaw machine we supplied to Jaguar Land Rover is equipped to provide high-speed friction sawing if required, our approach was to identify bandsaw blades that would run at the conventional speeds the teardown team is used to cutting at, all while providing the best results.”
Dynashape is an approved supplier to Jaguar Land Rover. The blades supplied include Dynashape’s Silencer product (1 in. by 6-10 teeth per inch, TPI) and Intenss Pro product (1/2 in. by 8-12 TPI). Both products provide smoother cutting action on aluminium as well as on occasional steel test pieces.
NEW RESOURCES
In 2016, Dynashape invested £1 million in five new CNC machines – three of which are robotic – that it has installed in its UK facility. As a result, the company now has 4-, 5- and 6-axis CNC saw blade production technologies from machine manufacturers including Loroch, Vollmer and Walter. It is able to offer a comprehensive one-stop solution for manufacturing and remanufacturing tungsten carbide tipped (TCT), super high strength steel (SHSS) and solid carbide saw blades, as well as polycrystalline diamond (PCD) tooling.
Dynashape says that it ‘remanufactures’ rather than sharpens blunt saw blades. The company says that the result of that process is that a remanufactured blade will perform like new, before there’s any issue of degradation due to reduced base material and tooth facet, for around three-quarters of its useable life, for the majority of Dynashape customers. Stresses Parkes: “The real point is that our remanufactured blades perform just as precisely as they did when new, all for substantially less than the cost of purchasing new blades.”
It also offers modifications to new blades to improve on OEM-supplied products and create bespoke cutting solutions and tooth profiles for superior results when cutting all manner of materials.
Dynashape is part of the UK-based Addison Group.