Ventilation product manufacturer Kelvent has taken a leap forward in its production capabilities after investing in two LVD PPED press brakes and an LVD LaserONE 6kW fibre laser cutting system.
Kelvent has been trading for more than 40 years and has a trade counter and a manufacturing facility under one roof. Originally the business was an installation company, but it started to make its own products and in 2000 it decided to stop working on installations and focus on being a manufacturer and distributer.
Managing Director Paul Kelly says that around 75 to 80% of the products that Kelvent sells are made in-house. It produces spiral and square ducting on its own machines and buys in items such as pressed fittings and fans. The square ducting is bespoke and made in-house on the LVD press brakes.
The increase in productivity generated by the two press brakes meant that Kelvent needed to upgrade its cutting capacity, replacing two plasma machines with an LVD LaserONE 6kW fibre laser. Like the press brakes, the LaserONE is very simple to use and is designed to be a cost-effective machine with no unnecessary complications or features – which made it ideal for what Kelvent wanted.
“The controllers are the same whether you are working on the lasers or the press brakes which is another good factor. It can be quite daunting when you are faced with new technology but it is so easy to work it’s not overly complicated.”
The performance is impressive too says Paul: “It is super-fast and has a pallet changer shuttle table so the operator is loading and unloading while the machine is cutting.” He adds: “I decided on a 6 kW machine, although at the moment a 3 kW laser would have been sufficient. If you are cutting thin galvanised sheet it doesn’t really matter, but if we go on to make things like kitchen canopies we will use the extra power. It opens up a lot more opportunities. It’s so fast we are having to look at how we work the business because we can have all the jobs for the week cut out in about a day so we are going to have to work out how to keep it full. You could plan the plasma and know it would take say three hours to cut the parts, but now it is cut in much less than that. You don’t need to factor in the cutting time because the parts are always available to bend when you need them. The capacity to cut is phenomenal.”
Overall, he says, production is about 75% faster with the new laser and press brakes, and Kelvent is making about 35% more product that it was before. So much so that it has had to buy a new 7.5 tonne truck and take on a second driver. He is full of praise for the support he gets from LVD, which he says is ‘brilliant’. “LVD understood what we were looking for when we came to buy the machines. When you buy a new folder you are a bit hesitant and you want to buy the right thing, and they helped us with the tooling. With the two folders we were working on them right away – the same with the laser.”
Summing up, Paul says that quality is key for the business and the LVD machines are taking us to another level. “A lot of companies that make and sell the product also have an installation business next to them. We just deliver it and the contractor fits it. They need to be able to rely on high quality and accurate products. We have always been renowned for quality and we have managed to grow the business based on that. That quality has just gone up another notch because the LVD press brakes fold parts so well and the laser cut quality is so good.”
Contact: Maryse McHale
Maryse.McHale@lvdgroup.com