Making the cut

Suwanee, Georgia-based Panafab Custom Machine Builders has spent the past three decades furthering the special automation processes of customers ranging from Fortune 500 component and tool manufacturers to small machining firms and even worm farmers.

“We’ve dedicated ourselves to customers looking to augment their production lines with customized equipment and automation systems,” says Panafab President Joe Panetta. “After years of investing in the highest-quality engineering and programming software, tools, and machinery, we’re now transitioning to the design and build of proprietary lines of industrial automation equipment designed to increase the productivity, improve the quality, and reduce the costs of our client’s manufacturing processes.

“We are, however, still supporting many of our existing partners with industry-specific solutions designed to reinforce their unique production, assembly, and fabrication needs.”

The legacy services extend to manufacturing a custom aluminum handle produced for a handheld heat-sealing tool used by the military to hermetically seal jet engines in foil polymers. “Unfortunately, our early attempts proved far too expensive for a short run of about one thousand parts,” Panetta explains. “We tried making our own extruded profile, but there was no way to cut the handle into the necessary z-pattern with conventional methods. So, we decided to think out-of-the-box when we reached out to Bestway Products at the advice of one of our associates.”

Since 1986, the Bestway Products Co. has manufactured a full line of Spyral saw blades enabling tight, intricate cuts virtually impossible with conventional, flat saw blades. Designed with a single continuous cutting tooth that spirals 360° around the length of a hardened steel wire, the Spyral saw blades cut metals, plastics, ceramics, and other materials for many machining and fabrication applications.

“Conventional toothed saw blades are typically flat, cut in a forward direction, and need to be positioned so the teeth face the material at the right angle,” says Stuart Gordon, Bestway’s owner & president. “Our Spyral saw blades cut in all directions, even sideways and backwards. They’ll cut in the direction of the feed pressure, which can make a significant difference when cutting without rigid fixturing.”

After initial conversations with Bestway, Panafab developed a cutting platform based on company recommendations. The custom bandsaw was designed to rapidly cut the aluminum handles sequentially from their aluminum extrusion, requiring two axes of motion to produce a part in one cut with the Spyral blade. This action was repeated continually until the entire extrusion was consumed.

Testing followed by success

Prior to undertaking the design of a custom saw, Bestway suggested Panafab send the extrusion material for test cuts.

“Once we received the material and thoroughly understood their fabrication needs, we experimented with Spyral blades of different diameters until we developed a template that we thought would work,” Gordon says. “We had previously put in a lot of effort to develop a weld for the Spyral blade to be used in continuous loop applications.”

Bestway provided Panafab with recommendations within a few days of receiving the manufacturing details and running tests on the aluminum pieces. Within four months, Panafab was producing 1,500-piece batches of the aluminum handle with a 0.050" Spyral blade making dimensionally accurate simultaneous vertical and horizontal cuts in a single stroke.

“We’ve been working with this particular client for nearly 20 years,” Panetta says. “And they keep coming back because they thoroughly appreciate the quality of our work and ability to deliver on demand. This was a particularly tricky request that we fulfilled in an extremely timely fashion and with incredibly precise and cost-effective results. There’s no way this could have happened without Bestway.”

“This is what we do,” Gordon adds. “Regularly working with companies to develop unconventional solutions for unique applications is our specialty. There are times that the traditional blades used on existing bandsaws just won’t work. This application was perfect for us. They could have gone in other directions. But those systems would likely have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce.”

Bestway Products Co.

Panafab Custom Machine Builders