Raise the roof

Van and commercial vehicle roof bar specialist T-Racks of Redditch is benefiting from greater flexibility of production, higher work rates and improved throughput for the company's range of one piece welded roof bars, following the purchase of a refurbished Lazerblade laser cutting machine from World Machinery.

T-Racks, a specialist in roof bars, roof racks and roof bar accessories for all makes of van has developed a complete range of one piece welded roof bars for all new commercial vehicles available on the market today. The design is based around durability and simplicity, a quick fit solution that will last the lifetime of the van.
Each bar is made from light eight steel square box section, which is then zinc electroplated to prevent the bars from rusting when open to the elements. T-Racks roof bars and brackets are a single, tough welded section and each bracket is pre-engineered to the dimensions of the individual vehicle and van, whatever the make and model. This ensures that onsite fixing is simply a matter of placing the rack in position and securing the bracket with one or two tough fixings per leg.

Both T-Racks and sister company Convert-a-van have over 15 years' combined experience in the demanding commercial vehicle conversion market. The company has built a reputation for being the first port of call for all van conversion needs, covering all makes and models of vans.

In this market sector, cost and delivery times are paramount. To meet these demands, the company has to be in control of its own manufacturing and has invested in its own CNC machining, welding and fitting bays, enabling the T-Rack product to be manufactured on demand and for standard vans to be converted to functional vehicles in optimised timescales.

“The wide variety of products that we make and conversions that we undertake means that we often have to manufacture bespoke laser cut components,” says Convert-a-Van and T-Racks managing director, Clive Harris. “Previously, everything was bought in, meaning that we were always at the mercy of suppliers with regards to quality, price and delivery. Not having the flexibility to manufacture these components in-house, affected our ability to turn conversions and large orders around as fast as we would have liked.

“As any of our customers will testify, we are a very go-ahead company,” he adds. This means that we don't sit on our hands and think that what we do can't be improved. We realised that we had to be in control of our own destiny as regards the production of special laser cut parts, so we decided to invest in a suitable laser cutter to complement our manufacturing facilities at Redditch.

“We looked around for a supplier and were finally recommended to World Machinery. The company understood what we were trying to achieve and provided us with a refurbished Lazerblade laser cutting machine and installed it at a price to suit our budget. For the first three month's following installation, the Lazerblade was working flat-out. What the machine does for us is allow us to manufacture the special components that we need when we need them. This means that our work rate, overall, is now faster, and our throughput that much higher.”

Characterised by its low running costs, high speed, high accuracy and high performance, the Lazerblade is a ‘no-compromise' machine with its 3m by 1.5m bed and flying optics. The laser integrates a wide range of productivity features as standard and offers rapid changeover times from an inbuilt cutting library.
Convert-a-Van and T-Racks use the Lazerblade to cut mild steel in thicknesses up to 8mm, however the laser also offers the capability for cutting stainless steel and aluminium, producing a clean oxide-free cut edge using high pressure (up to 25 bar) nitrogen.

Commenting on World Machinery's latest success story, managing director, Wayne Hipkiss states: “We have specialised in supplying a huge range of new and used laser cutting machines, punch presses, and other CNCs for many years, so we offer laser machining packages with a very balanced attitude towards satisfying our customer's needs. We find that providing the best machine for the application, with low running costs, plus favourable finance, is a package that's very hard to compete with.”

World Machinery
www.worldmc.co.uk