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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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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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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A little over 6 years ago Steel Builders in Sydney, Australia came to the realization that they would be much more competitive with a CNC beam drill line.  In September 2012 Steel Builders’ new Ocean Avenger CNC Beam Line was installed, and their tonnage throughput dramatically increased – they haven’t looked back since.

Steel Builders is now producing 80 tons of light steel per day

Today they produce approximately 80 tons of light housing steel beams every day and have outgrown just using their Avenger Beam Line, they have now added both a Peddinghaus PCD-C Beam Line and an XDM to their automation.

The Avenger CNC Beam Line is being kept very busy with flat bar

Through all of their incredible growth they still keep the Avenger very busy and working hard, their Avenger is now focused 100% on flat bar. The Avenger CNC Beam Line is truly an amazing workhorse!

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Yes, the Ocean Avenger is known for drilling holes in beams and columns and adding layout marks for welded attachments, but it does so much more!

We have one customer who is using their Avenger to drill holes through both walls of 1.5” pipe. Have fun trying to do that with a mag drill!

Drill and layout channel for stair stringers

Another customer used to process all their flat bar on an iron worker, it worked, but it was an inefficient and labor intensive process. Now they put a 20 ft piece of flat bar on their Avenger and drill all the holes and add layout pop marks to indicate where to shear it, saving valuable time, money and man-hours.

The extreme versatility of the Avenger allows you to process all profiles up to 40” high. The possibilities are endless!

Angle

T-sections

Base Plate

And so much more!

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In the heart of Bulawayo Zimbabwe, a young couple, Eugene and Agnes Jackson, have created an amazing company called Pump and Steel Supplies, and in a few short years have grown it into a powerhouse of productivity, and now employ more than 300 personnel. They manufacture everything from Structural Steel to roofing materials to door and window frames, and everything in between.

Roofing manufacturing lines at Pump and Steel Supplies

They currently operate from a 300,000 sqft building, previously the railways workshop building, and have started to transform this facility from an essentially manual operation into a state of the art CNC automated manufacturing facility.

Peddinghaus 210AD Ironworker from 1971

One of the older machines in their floor is their trusty Peddinghaus 210AD Ironworker built in the Peddinghaus Germany factory back in 1971, and this machine still performs as well as it did when it was built, more than 46 years ago. This machine will now reside across from their most recent installation, a line featuring a dual column Terminator Band Saw and the formidable Ocean Avenger PLUS CNC Drill Line. And just across from the drill line is their new Ocean Clipper CNC Angle Line.

Recent installation: dual column Terminator Band Saw and Ocean Avenger PLUS CNC Drill Line

One senses that not only is Pump and Steel Supplies about to rewrite structural steel fabrication in the country, but the entire country of Zimbabwe is poised for a massive bounce as soon as investment capital rolls in. While the departing president Robert Mugabe might have been reviled, the one thing he really did well was invest in education of the citizens, and the talent and skill in Zimbabwe is ready to make their mark on the continent of Africa.

Left to Right – Ray Chellew (SKOK salesman), Eugene Jackson (Managing Director – Pump and Steel Supplies), Ndaba Mhlanga (Technical Director – Pump and Steel Supplies), Sean Devenny Skok Installer

Ray Chellew and Sean Devenny of SKOK Machine tool in front of the Ocean Clipper CNC Angle Line at Pump and Steel Supplies Zimbabwe

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So, what do you do if a bulldozer has an untimely contact with a tree that destroys a vital ventilation screen?

Simple really, contact a steel fabricator that has an Avenger drill line! This is what happened to one of great customers, Gary Hobbs of GH engineering in Palmerstone New Zealand.

Gary looked at the original screen and said, “yeah mate, we can do this”, and put a 16mm thick steel plate on the Avenger table and let this versatile machine work its magic. Because the Avenger would have to drill more than 840 holes  each 26mm (1”) in diameter, Gary reduced the feed rate of the machine, so as not to overheat the hydraulic fluid that would be continuously working,

Despite the reduced feed rate, his Avenger still completed this unusual job in only 2hours and 12 minutes, proving yet again just how versatile this amazing machine is.

We love seeing these great stories and inventive uses of our Ocean Avenger, so if you have an interesting story or project, please send them to us – email to info@oceanmachinery.com

The versatile Ocean Avenger making replacement ventilation screen

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Danny Steyn with Cousins Steel machining specialist Jody de Bruin

On a recent trip to South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe, Ocean Machinery’s Vice President, Danny Steyn met with several customers including Cousins Steel who is one of the premier Kwazulu-Natal based steel fabricators located in Pietermaritzburg.

Cousins Steel implemented the Ocean Avenger and Ocean Clipper CNC solutions in 2011, and it was pleasing to see just how well the machines are maintained, despite the heavy usage.

Ocean Clipper – Cousins Steel, South Africa

Cousins Steel’s machining specialist Jody de Bruin, who meticulously maintains and operates the machines proudly showed us the Avenger, Clipper and Rejuvenator drill grinder. Steyn remarked to De Bruin that it was possibly the cleanest and best maintained drill sharpener that he had seen in almost a thousand installations.

When Steyn asked De Bruin how the Avenger had been performing he replied that apart from one recent valve issue, the machine has performed flawlessly for over 6 years, and stated that he was getting over 2,000 holes per sharpening on the standard Ocean Penetrator Drill Bits.

Cousins Steel, South Africa

These are the stories that we love to share with our customers, dealers and prospects. Nothing makes us more proud than to see machines working hard in our customer’s shops.

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All Ocean products are designed to be fully-functional stand-alone machines that exhibit amazing productivity and versatility in their own right, and are designed to fit into very compact spaces since most of our customers are pressed for space.  However, they are also fully capable of being integrated into fully-functional systems for those customers who have the space to implement them.  This can be done at any time in a step-by-step approach as needs require and as funds become available.

We are finding more and more customers using the Avenger (and Avenger PLUS) drill line to not only drill and layout their beams, but also to measure the beam for cutting to length and coping.  We often see our machines in a system layout where the Avenger drills, lays out and measures, and the Terminator cuts to length.

Ocean Liberator integrated with Avenger Drill Line

But for those customers who have a significant percentage of their work that also needs to be coped, an Avenger or Avenger PLUS in tandem with the Liberator CNC Coper is even more versatile.  These customers use the drill line to place the location reference marks and then use the Liberator to not only cope the beams, but also to cut to length.

Just outside Fresno in Northern California, Steve Bradford of Bradford Steel started off with an Avenger and then subsequently added a Liberator to cope and cut to length.  He installed cross transfers to facilitate loading the Avenger and added idler rollers to the drill table, making it easier to feed the beams into the coper.  His future plans include additional cross transfers integrated with the outfeed of the Liberator to further speed up production, and the integration of an Ocean Blaster to further reduce costs and improve profitability.

Material handling integrated with Avenger Drill Line

Ocean Machinery provides full CAD layout drawings of an entire system in your location, showing you how the various products can all be integrated in the future.  This step-by-step modular approach to machine integration means that you never have to invest too much at one time; just add machines as needed.

Call us today toll free at 1-800-286-3624 or at 1-954-956-3131. We look forward to helping you create a customized fully functional integrated system for your shop.

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Cesar Velesaca, President J&C Steel Fabricators (center) with members of his crew and Tom Doyle of Doyle Structural Solutions

They neatly placed their machine against the wall where the steel supply truck backs into the bay to unload parallel to the Avenger.

Avenger Drill Line positioned so trucks can unload parallel to table

The position of the Avenger makes loading and unloading on the truck easy

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