“We’ve greatly expanded our capabilities”

In Beverly, Ohio, Waterford Tank and Fabrication produces above-ground storage tanks and custom ASME pressure vessels, employing more than 70 people in a facility larger than a soccer field. The plant is equipped with a range of cutting-edge machinery, including a plasma cutting machine and another one with both plasma and oxyfuel, an assortment of ring rollers, a press brake, and ten overhead cranes.

Despite a steady flow of projects, the growing volume, complex production processes and limitations in the ability to process thicker materials, began to slow the company's expansion. "In the past, we manually transferred measurements from drawings onto the dome and made cuts with a hand-held plasma torch. The edges were then prepared for welding using a grinder," says Waterford's President Matt Brook. "Typically, processing a single dome would take anywhere from eight to 10 hours."

Waterford faces a shortage of skilled labor, quite typical in the field, and the lengthy production process was draining valuable resources and limiting opportunities. To increase capacity and improve efficiency, the company needed a more versatile and automated system that could handle thicker plate cutting and accelerate production.

During the search for solutions, Brook was introduced to United Precision Services, MicroStep's exclusive North American partner. After considering various options, the company chose the MicroStep DRM plasma and oxyfuel cutting machine, capable of both straight and bevel cutting of plates, as well as cutting precise opening into domes. The multifunctional machine features a water cutting table 4.5 x 13.5 m big and a second, sunk work area designed for processing large vessel heads.

The new system not only expands Waterford's capacity to process thick metals, it also automates the majority of dome cutting tasks, including trimming, separation cuts, weld edge preparation, and cutting of inverted domes. MicroStep's 3D laser scanning technology coupled with its proprietary point cloud mapping software mScan, enables precise cutting by mapping the true shape of the dome and adjusting the cutting process accordingly.

John Prevish, National Sales Manager at United Precision Services, highlights the significance of this technology for dome cutting accuracy. "The actual dimension of a dome can lay within allowed tolerances, which in fact means that the real and ideal shapes of domes sometimes differ by inches, and conventional 2D methods of positioning corrections via control of plasma arc voltage do not apply to 3D cutting," he explains. "The MicroStep scanner creates a model of the actual dome surface within the coordinate system of the cutting machine. This model can be used to analyze the shape of the dome, identify its center, and define the exact toolpath above the surface."

By incorporating the scanner's data with machine kinematics measured by laser interferometers and calibration data from the bevel head, the control system ensures exact alignment between the scanned object and the cutting tool. The software then creates a detailed 3D model of the true shape of the dome, identifying any deviations from the ideal shape to guarantee the highest possible cutting accuracy.

With these new capabilities, Waterford has significantly improved efficiency and reduced cutting times. The automated system streamlines dome production, allowing the company to take on more work without needing additional staff. Workers who previously handled manual dome cutting can now be reassigned to other necessary tasks in production or sales support.

"For years we were limited in terms of the volume and scope of jobs we could take on," says Rocky Roberts, Vice President of Sales and Marketing. "With MicroStep, we've greatly expanded our capabilities and today we're able to process domes up to 14 ft in diameter and 55 inches high. This allows us to offer even more value-added services to our customers. Now, instead of them spending hours manually figuring out dome hole penetrants, we can make the cuts and return the dome to them at a fraction of the time."