Prestige on cutting edge of technology.

Water is a remarkable substance for its ability to sustain life and to radically alter landscapes over thousands of years or even in a few moments.

Water and sand at high pressure are now also being used as a tool to open new product and service opportunities and alter the direction for Elliot Lake's Prestige Glass International.

Prestige Glass International is a maker of glass and crystal products, including awards for the American Hockey League, the Canadian Country Music Awards and many of the Fortune 500 companies.

"We're the largest manufacturer of glass and crystal awards in the country," says Robert Jackson, president of Prestige Glass International. "A lot of companies are decorators. They buy someone else's product and may decorate it with a company's logo. We actually manufacture products. We're one of the top two or three companies in the industry in North America."

What has Jackson excited about Prestige's future is the recent purchase of an Integrated Flying Bridge waterjet cutter. For an investment of over $200,000, the company acquired the machine last August to help in its core business of cutting out glass shapes. Financing for the technology was provided by the Sault Ste. Marie branch of the Business Development Bank of Canada.

It soon became readily apparent that it could have many other uses for the company to start accessing the contracting-out market, Jackson says.

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He describes the machine as being similar to many other computer printers or plotters with a writing head that works with water pressure instead of ink. The device relies on precision computer control and an extremely intense and focused jet of water and sand to make precision cuts of any material from glass to granite to steel over a piece of material as large as 40 inches by 40 inches.

The water and sand slurry travels out of a pencil-thin nozzle at 60,000 pounds per square inch (PSI) and at Mach 3 or three times the speed of sound.

"It can cut whatever shape you can generate on a CAD (Computer Assisted Design) system," says Jackson.

"For my own business, it's great. It helps me cut out shapes of glass a lot faster than I used to. This could also work for Northern Ontario machine shops, mining companies, mills, companies that even have their own machine shop. We can do some low-cost prototype cutting of any material without applying heat to it."

This is an important consideration, he says, because heat can change the molecular structure of some materials such as certain types of steel, which then makes it unusable for certain applications. The machine also cuts out very precise forms, including circles and other items that would otherwise be extremely difficult.

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"There's signage, for instance, and those large letters you see cut out of Styrofoam and aluminum," he says. "Instead of cutting through those with a band saw, we can put them on this thing and it cuts through it like a hot knife through butter. Otherwise, sign companies would have to send them out to have them cut.

"We can cut out working prototypes that require little machining afterwards," says Jackson. "If you wanted to cut a gear out of steel or nylon plastic, it's fairly complicated to cut those kinds of shapes out with any traditional form of tooling. The waterjet can cut it out all automatically by computer.

"It's a lot faster, and, normally you can only cut things like that in a straight line," he adds. "With this, I can cut a slab of granite into a circle, and there's no other way to do that. If you didn't have one of these, you'd have to cut out a rough circle and then grind it round. Or, if you wanted some obscure shape, you'd have to try and cut that out in rough and then smooth it with milling tools."

Jackson says the machine is made by Flow Automation of Seattle, Washington. The company installed the machine and several of his staff have received considerable training in it including trips to Detroit where the machine is manufactured to learn about how the machine is put together and how to make repairs quickly to minimize delays in the event of a breakdown.

"We were ready for it," he says. "The company even commented on how quickly we adapted to it and started using the thing in a constructive fashion. Most companies order these things to use and then have them sitting around for six months. We had it up and working for us before the technician even left."

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Prestige Glass had been investigating the feasibility of buying this piece of equipment for the past three years and has been focused primarily on its own glass cutting business since the initial acquisition. Now that the company is accustomed to working with the machine, Jackson says they are ready to start marketing its cutting service for other companies in Northern Ontario.

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"As far as I know, we're the only company with a waterjet cutter between Barrie and Winnipeg," says Jackson. "There are plenty of water jet services in southern Ontario. This is not to replace what I do, but it is to add an additional service up here in Northern Ontario because there's nothing else like it."

Prestige Glass International, a vertically integrated manufacturer, was founded in December 1994, and currently employs about 47 people.

To Contact Prestige Glass:

5 Roddis Road, Elliot Lake, ON P5A 2T1

Toll Free: 1-800-798-3115

Fax: [phone]

Web site: www.prestigeglass.com

E-mail: [e-mail]