'Sweet' success, no matter what language: when faced with a military project, a shop purchased a 6 kW laser instead of a 5 kW laser and was able to produce an additional 150 part sets per week due to the time savings.

In Italian, "LoDolce" means "the sweet." LoDolce Machine Co., Saugerties, NY, has experienced a bit of; a vita dolce - the sweet life - since its inception in 1960.

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Michael LoDolce's grandfather started the company in Brooklyn, NY, with four employees. The business provided general machining services - milling, grinding, and turning - for machine repair of printing machines.

Four years later, LoDolce Machine had outgrown its Brooklyn home and moved to a 23-acre property with one building in Saugerties.

"There was plenty of room to grow here," Michael LoDolce, the shop's current president, said. "As our business has grown and diversified we have added a new building about every 15 years, and even more frequently in recent years. Our seventh building was completed last year, bringing us to 100,000 [ft.sup.2] of production and warehousing space."

Its staff of 65 services the transportation, computer, aerospace, and military industries with body machining and sheet metal fabrication capabilities.

"We added sheet metal fabrication to our portfolio of services about 25 years ago to better serve our customers," he said. "We provide them with dock-to-stock service by producing complete part packages that included machining, fabrication, welding, and finishing. We even package the parts in the customer's box. When the shipment arrives at their facility the parts are ready to go right into production."

A Journey into the World of Exotic Materials

On the surface, LoDolce Machine may appear to be a traditional job shop specializing in high-end, high-precision production of steels and aluminum. But, upon a deeper look, some of its major projects - particularly in the aerospace and military industries - are anything but traditional.

A TruMatic 600 machine from TRUMPF Inc., Farmington, CT, was installed in 1999. It was the company's first step into the world of fabricating exotic materials.

Pratt & Whitney had just begun the production of the F-22 fighter aircraft for the U.S. Air Force, so it needed to meet tight-tolerance parts from Inconel for the tail pipe exhaust system. The ideal machine for this work was a combination punch and laser, but Pratt & Whitney did not have machines with that dual capability. So, it called upon LoDolce Machine.

"We've been making the parts ever since," LoDolce said. "The ongoing work for the F-22 project is why we bought our second combination machine."

The second purchase was a TruMatic 6000, making production sweeter for LoDolce and his shop.

Protecting our Troops

LoDolce Machine's excursion into exotic materials led it to titanium high-speed processing. It was selected to provide titanium and armored steel parts for the U.S. Army's M1 Abrams tanks. The tanks have heavy shielding in the front and back, but less protection on the sides, making them vulnerable to IEDs.

To increase robustness, reactive armor tiles were developed protect the sides of the tanks. Should the tank suffer an attack from either side, the tiles detonate and pre-ignite the projectile before impact, redirect shrapnel, and prevent it from penetrating the tank and injuring the soldiers inside. With about 160 tiles, each measuring about 14" x 13", mounted on individual tanks, the military needed a lot of them, and fast.

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To keep up with demands for the tiles, LoDolce Machine had a weekly production quota of 1,000 part sets. Each part set was comprised of 10 parts - five of titanium and five of armored steel. In order to meet both the challenge and customer satisfaction, speed and accuracy were crucial.

The need for speed eliminated the traditional methods of processing titanium, such as waterjet cutting. LoDolce Machine determined that laser cutting was its only option. Laser cutting was 10 times faster than waterjet, which could not hold the required tolerances. To meet the weekly quota demands the company needed the fastest laser available.

The Difference a Kilowatt Makes

In researching the laser power needed for the job, LoDolce found that both a 5 kW and ^ kW laser could process the material, but he determined the 6 kW's additional power produced something besides power: time savings. The 6 kW could cut a sheet about 57 seconds faster than the 5 kW. This savings resulted in 14 hours of additional processing time per week letting the company produce an additional 150 part sets each week.

"Even though the processing time per part with a 6 kW resonator was only a few seconds faster, the time savings added up," LoDolce said. "We would not have been able to meet our production quota with a 5 kW machine."

Armed with its TruLaser 4030 6 kW and LiftMaster, purchased for the project, LoDolce Machine met the challenge of high-volume production of the titanium and armored steel tiles. Cutting parts as fast as possible, it learned that its ability to meet quota did not depend on how fast it could cut material, but on support services. The company was going through material and nitrogen so fast that suppliers could not keep up with its demand. Soon after production began, a bulk nitrogen tank was installed to alleviated gas shortage issues.

To address material supply and make sets faster, it was necessary to create sheet nests that produced entire sets, rather than a single part. For example, a single sheet nest of the armored steel contained seven complete part sets. For the titanium parts, the company discovered that by producing the full run with seven different sheet nests, material savings of almost 10 percent could be achieved compared to producing a single part number per sheet. This resulted in a weekly materials savings of more than $40,000.

After two years of high-volume production running 24 hours a day, the company completed the MI Abrams tank project.

"We cut about one million panels during the life of the project, processing 8,000 4' x 8' sheets of titanium," LoDolce said.

In addition to the titanium, the company processed another 8,000 sheets of armored steel for the tanks. When asked how the titanium and steel parts were used together in the reactive armor title assembly. LoDolce said, " I really don't know. That information was classified. We just made and shipped the parts. No questions asked." TRUMPF, Inc.

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