Guided Metal Cutting

The NSRP Advanced Shipbuilding Enterprise (ASE) Strategic Investment Plan identifies the major initiatives that are required to promote commercial competitiveness and thereby reduce the cost of military ships. An important research area that is identified in the Strategic Investment Plan is improvement of manufacturing technologies. One of the most basic manufacturing processes is the cutting of metal, which is one of the first steps in transforming a piece of metal into a structure. Our innovation allows shipyards to improve the performance of their plasma cutting systems significantly. In Phase I we demonstrated that retrofit hardware that embodies our innovation gives standard plasma cutting torches a large boost in performance by (1) increasing cutting speeds by at least 30%, (2) allowing cutting of thicker metal plates, (3) reducing power input, and (4) creating smoother cuts. Our guided metal cutting approach promises to be a much lower cost and safer option than laser-based cutting practices that are currently being considered by the U.S. shipbuilding community. In Phase II we will design, test, and evaluate the retrofit torch. We will demonstrate the efficacy of our approach at a major shipyard in a production setting during the project to ensure acceptability of our new approach.