ALLFI AG, THE NEW WAY TO CUT COMPOSITES WITH WATERJET

These new materials well represent the will to innovate and go beyond limits , plus ultra as Francis Bacon loved to say or Spain itself to the point this way of saying is its national motto. It’s no mystery why composites are being used in industries that are used to look outside the limits as aerospace, design, shipping, automotive and motorsport. More specifically these materials are being transitioned from a more aestetical role to more an more structural one , under the drive of engineering heritage, with increased focus on production systems, tolerancies, of course not forgetting the aestetical quality.   For non-professionals what goes under the name of composite or composite materials is a  texture of fibers (carbon or else)with excellent mechanical properties that are overlooped, soaked and entangled with resin bonds, then dried out and whose characteristics exceed metals especially for what concerns lightness, stiffness and stress-resistance. Nowadays they are extensively available in a wide portfolio of variants in terms of stratifiction, matrixes, fibers and bonds that are capable of meeting the widest range of possible applications.  They are known to be traditionally difficult to process due to their layered structure, where, typically during cutting, delamination (loss of external  layers) takes place. It is therefore common sense that production processes of items made with composites are long and require the use of multiple tools especially in first phases of pre drilling that are the most problematic ones and typically these take place with the use of a mechanical drill that makes the first slow speed bore through the structure and then other tools perform the cut, main actor being waterjet cutting with abrasive or also pure water. This is where ALLFI is the game changer (for infos www.allfi.com).

Plus Ultra motto well attains to ALLFI as this company embodies for waterjet cutting industry this tendency towards innovation and visceral push towards continuous improvement, beyond limits, beyond tradition. This concept sounds so distinctly racing, artisanal and speaks about the art of well doing that when my good friend and countryman Matteo Fallini of IGM srl (www.igm.one) who by the way is italian exclusive distributor of ALLFI told me about this company I demanded and obtained that got an article inside Menu dei Motori. So I cut it short and leave the stage to  Torben Schwermann, technical responsible of ALLFI to enlighten us on how ALLFI can achieve the cutting of composites with only waterjet machine and no need of predrilling.  “For the piercing of composite materials, the interaction of HP    pump,    sand    dosing   / quality   and   cutting   head   is  extremely mportant. In addition to the need for stepless adjustment of the pump pressure that can be achieved with some proper knowledge , ALLFI patented sand conveyor and dosing system  can accurately  meter and dose sand quantity. In addition to the above, ALLFI technology 2.0 that covers a new generation of HP components gives its best with fast and constant switching behavior of the cutting head (we are the only one in the world with a cutting head capable of operating switches with just 200 bar water pressure).  In this way, the perfect timing for a process-reliable piercing can be achieved. Our system is this way capable of cutting composites without pre-drilling or need of preliminary processes while avoiding delamination. the process is therefore precise, reliable and industrially scalable. And more: our unique system allows to adjust the operating speed of the on/off cycle thus increasing overall efficiency, it’s also significantly lighter and smaller than any other competitor cutting head , we can say we are the racing  version of the technology and this paves the way to integrate our system in any robotic cell clusters, multi-heads applications to increase productivity and make more parts with the same HP circuit. The icing on the cake is then our 2.o seal system (carried by all 2.0 heads, bleed valves, swivels..) that has an average lifetime of minimum 300% more than any other cutting head in the market. What does it mean? More reliability, less downtimes, it’s a system with small number of spare parts that can be easily installed and maintained without need of special tools or special operator’s skills, though its our way to encourage and give training to operators so that they can really get the max out of our system’s capabilities. What else could we add… we are developing ambitious projects with some market’s Big  that required us to help them get that something more from their plants. Thanks to them we aim to continue being always some steps ahead of the technology. After all, the positive thing of competing in  motorsport business is that you can really feel how your efforts translate into our partners products” – And what products! – F.  Ferrari
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