Jamie Petith of Port Stephens Sheet Metal purchased a complete CNC Plasma System from SUREFIRE CNC back in October 2012. In Jamie’s words “I wouldn’t be in business without it!” Port Stephens Sheet Metal has been serving the Hunter Region of NSW for more than 28 years with first class fabrication for commercial and domestic clients.
“A large portion of our work is for the mining contactors building sampling stations. We manufacture components such as hoppers, chutes, transitions, etc from a variety of materials. We do a lot in 3mm spaniels steel. Some of the components are quite complex with a lot of holes. We also do a lot of aluminium work where we cut out a lot of brackets and flanges up to 12mm thick. The jobs are mostly sent to us electronically as a CAD drawing (DXF) and some I will draw or edit in the HVAC software. From there we simply upload the drawing file into the CNC Plasma system, convert it to a cut path, load the material on the bed and hit ‘cut’.
Moments later we have an accurately cut component ready for assembly. We have also cut out a sign for the front of our shop and I cut a bit of artwork for myself on the side that I download from the web. SUREFIRE CNC’s new CNC Plasma machine is just so free-flowing and easy to operate. In just a couple of weeks I had it mastered. I have now even trained up all my tradesman in the workshop and so they can all run the machine to cut out whatever they need to without any help. It has added a lot of value to our whole business. Previously we were turning away business or outsourcing to laser work that I wouldn’t dare take on because I was never confident of being able to produce it accurately. With additional capability, reduced costs, and substantially increased efficiency, the decision to invest the 30 odd grand we paid for the package was a no-brainer!
Now we are even taking on work that customers were previously sending to laser! In this day and age you have to be up with technology to survive and we wouldn’t be in business without our CNC cutting system from SUREFIRE CNC!”
