Jarrod Slatter, the project manager at Coasteel Engineering in Australia, showed us all just how much power there is contained within the latest Ocean Avenger PLUS multifunction machine.

Jarrod was tasked with the project of improving an architectural component that they fabricate from HSS steel on a regular basis.

With a little math, some creative programming, a bit of trial and error, and the legendary milling power of the Avenger PLUS, Jarrod and the team at Coasteel were able to successfully create a joint that reduced the number of inches their welders need to perform, which in turn means less heat, less time and lower cost of fabrication, and a more aesthetic final product overall! TOTAL WIN!

Thank you for inspiring us all Jarrod, and keep on sharing your creative work. We look forward to seeing what you will come up with next.

And to all our fabricating customers, share with us what you have been doing lately – we would love to showcase your work!

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Ocean Machinery and their manufacturing partner AGT Robotics recently performed a LIVE webinar for a large contingent of structural steel and metal building fabricators.

Here is the recording of the live demo, showing the Ocean Challenger automatically welding a simple column that would typically take around 90 minutes to be welded manually.

This presentation contains all the pertinent technical information as well as pricing and ROI information.

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So many of us purchase feature loaded devices, and then use only a fraction of the features. Just think of how much functionality goes wasted in our fancy smartphones every day, and yet we always feel the need to upgrade to the latest version.

So when we see our customers using all the amazing functionality of our Ocean Avenger PLUS, it is really satisfying that they are getting everything out of their machines.

The Avenger PLUS has a fantastic scribing and part marking capability, and it goes a long way to eliminating the costly tape measure from the shop floor. Having your fitter, read a drawing, grab his tape measure, framing square and chalk, and then layout where the attachments are to be welded is a time consuming and expensive task.

Using the powerful scribing tool on the Avenger PLUS to layout exactly where to weld the attachments helps reduce costs, increase margins and make for a sustainable business.

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Every day, our customers show us how creative and enterprising they are.

On a recent visit to one of our customers, our technician Dave, noticed these cool roll-out tracks to get rid of unsightly wood dunnage that one needs to assist loading beams with a forklift.

This ingenious roll-out system was designed and implemented by the staff at National Machinery and Conveyor under the direction of the owner Josh Clifton. And like all great ideas, when you see it you think, that so obvious!

Josh hated seeing the timber in the walkway:- it made the place look untidy and it presented a trip hazard. So they came up with this simple system that they can extend and retract when needed.

Thanks guys, we love what you have done with the place!

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Baxter Engineering in Canberra, Australia has most of their fabricating bases covered with two separate divisions; a Structural Fab shop for all things structural and a Mechanical Fab shop that makes truck bodies, excavator buckets, and does mechanical repairs and more.

Second generation owners, Matt and Nathan Hart, saw the Ocean Blaster for the first time at the Fabtech Show in Chicago a few years ago and fell in love. They knew that once they had finished building their new facility, an Ocean Blaster would immediately find a home in their shop.

Fast forward to present day: Matt and Nathan have completed construction on their new facility, the Ocean Blaster has been installed, and it is already exceeding their expectations.

As you can see from the images, their shop is super clean, and Matt attributes a lot of that to the Ocean Blaster cleaning the steel before any of his guys even touch it. 

The team at Baxter fabricated their own cross-feed supports on both the in and out-feed sides of the Blaster. These supports create a good buffer zone on either end to reduce crane time. They also installed a jib crane on either end so they don’t tie up the overhead. 

We love our ingenious and creative customers, and we learn from them every day!

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It doesn’t matter if your VW Bug changes into a robot from outer space or your ’58 Plymouth Fury is possessed. People love giving their vehicles names, it signifies our close connection to our machinery and after all – machines are alive… right?

Not long after McCombs Steel in Statesville, NC, got their Ocean Challenger Robotic Welder, they realized what an asset and valued employee it had become. Huh, “valued employee”? Yes, you heard me correctly. “Bruce”, as he is affectionately known around the shop, has been welding up a storm with minimal breaks, no lunch, and never calls in sick. Bruce the robotic welder was most recently named McCombs Steel’s Employee of the Month.

If you would like to have an employee like Bruce, give us a call 800-286-3624, or visit https://oceanmachinery.com/es/ocean-challenger-robotic-welder/ for more info.

Special Thanks to Adam at McCombs Steel for the footage of “Bruce” and his new rotators working an easy 168 hour shift.

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Division Five, a structural fabricator located in Hollywood, SC, has been a valued customer of Ocean Machinery since their 2006 installation of the Terminator 1842 Saw and Avenger Drill Line.

The Ocean Liberator CNC Beam Coper was added in 2018 to minimize layout and coping times. A recent visit to their facility reveals W16 x 40’s requiring rat holes, web and flange beveling, taking around 7-minutes and 30 seconds per-end to cope and bevel.  Previous manual processing took about one-hour after grinding and final cleanup.

We also observed a “mammoth” W40 x 199 beam being drilled on their Ocean Avenger.  The Liberator Beam Coper was used to perform a trim-cut on this “heavy-weight” prior to drilling it.

We thank the team at Division Five for employing the Ocean brand of structural machinery to supplement their fabrication efforts.

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TPI Engineered Systems in Bowden, Georgia is really putting their new Ocean Clipper to work and loving every man-hour saving minute of it. A recent conversation with Robbie Morgan, Plant Manager on the Ocean Clipper Angle Line addition to their current Avenger Drill Line revealed the following:

• Prior to Clipper they had two, sometimes three men fabricating angle manually with an iron worker
• A 2″ x 2″ x 3/16” angle profile that was 3-4 feet in length requiring holes and slots on both legs would take 80-man-hours to saw, stack, layout, and punch 400 feet of material
• They ran this same job on the Clipper Angle Line in about 5-man-hours, saving 75 man-hours for other work.
• Accuracy and hole tolerances were greatly improved using the Clipper CNC Angle Line.

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A recent visit to Bulldog Ironworks, just south of Dallas, reveals how they  leverage Ocean Products to reduce man-hours and improve material flow through their recently expanded facility.  They specialize in heavy structural steel fabrication for both commercial and industrial markets.

Material flows in one direction through the shop starting with the Ocean Terminator Saw and their recent addition of the Ocean Liberator Coping Line. Nick Copeland Sr.,  commented that “we recently completed the stair-stinger cut-outs for a 16 story building, consisting of 96 stringers, in two-days using the Liberator” The Liberator has greatly improved productivity as witnessed in the channel cut-outs being processed for a steel supply house.

Bulldog Iron Works also integrated three pairs of Ocean Flipper Profile Rotators into their fitter-welder lines. Material is rotated at each station, eliminating costly wait times for overhead cranes.

BullDog Iron Works has 3 pair of Ocean Flippers

Operating since 1970, the Copeland family business is prospering due to their employee skill sets, commitment to quality workmanship and focus being a low cost producer using technology.

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For many of our customers, buying a CNC beamline is a daunting proposition. For most of them it is by far their most expensive capital purchase, and they have to be confident that the machine will pay for itself quickly. Not everyone believes us when we tell them that it will start to pay for itself from the first day its installed on their floor, and so we really love to share our real life customer experiences when it does just that.

The seaside town of East London on the East coast of South Africa is home to one of the premier automotive manufacturers worldwide, as well as one of our newest fabricating customers, Bennies Welding. Until recently, Bennies Welding had survived through thick and thin as a purely manual fabricating shop.  But when they landed a large project to extend the automotive manufacturing facility, the owner, Terry Davies, felt it was time to embrace CNC automation and made the decision to buy our Ocean Avenger CNC single spindle drill line, as well as our Ocean Terminator DCM 1825 high speed band saw.

Owner Terry Davies with one of the Avenger Operators, Deon Van Der Merwe, in front of their new CNC drill line, the Ocean Avenger

Owner Terry Davies and bandsaw operator Xavier White, in front of their new Ocean Terminator.

Depending on labor rates, the cost of a mag-drilled hole in a beam is typically estimated at around $1 – $2 per hole with the worldwide average being around $1.50.

Our local dealer, SKOK Machine Tool, completed the machine installation at Bennies Welding on the 19^th of September 2018, and towards the end of January 2019, almost exactly 4 months after installation, I visited their shop to see the machine working, and there on the screen was the number of holes drilled – 141,000!

The CNC screen showing the 141,000 holes already drilled on their Ocean Avenger in less than 4 months

So at Bennies Welding, the Avenger has almost paid for itself in 4 months. NOW THAT’S WHAT YOU CALL A RETURN ON INVESTMENT!

The complex and intricate support trusses that will soon being installed into the automotive plant, in the space above the existing lights, fire sprinklers and electrical lines, and under the existing roof, over the existing production line. As you can imagine, the installation is a very complex affair and has to be done after hours so that it doesn’t affect the production line. A project not for the faint of heart

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