Some very interesting news from Jaguar Land Rover https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38102507. If their plans come to fruition this will be great news for the UK laser cutting industry and of course the wider economy.
It’s also interesting to note their power requirements, at GF Laser electricity is a large part of our overhead as laser cutting machines love to use electricity. However, the new breed of fibre lasers like our Trumpf 3040 use substantially less power than the equivalent CO2 machine.
In order to monitor our power usage each one of our laser cutting machines is individually monitored so we can see how much electricity is being consumed at any one time. This information is fed back to a central piece of reporting software which calculates in pound notes how much electricity each machine uses each hour.
By keeping a constant watch on our power consumption we can make sure we cost all our work as competitively as possible and it helps us to understand how best to plan our shift work to make sure we take advantage of lower tariff electricity.
As we are also looking at our next capital investment for 2017 the usage of electricity is also helping us decide on which laser to purchase next. The fibre lasers use a lot less electricity but the capital costs and some of the running costs are more expensive than CO2 lasers.
A final word on Jaguar Land Rover, in our opinion it is imperative that the UK government continue to support our car industry and have a credible industrial strategy to drive economic growth over the next few years. It’s foolhardy to think we can continue to rely on the service sector to drive the UK economy especially in the Brexit era. Now is the opportunity to back Jaguar Land Rover and the myriad of UK suppliers that partner them.
Simon Tregillus | Director T: 01384 245095 M: 07792 143076 You can contact me through LinkedIn https://uk.linkedin.com/in/simon-tregillus-5ab05b10