Cutting line for insulation panels

Voorbij Prefab in Amsterdam produces sustainable prefab concrete products for, among other things, house construction. They wanted to expand to concrete production with insulation material. This created the demand for a production line for cutting insulation panels to size. As a result, Twin-Tech Engineering has designed and installed an efficient (semi)automatic production line.

The process

The insulation panels are stacked when they enter the factory hall. An operator removes the sealing from the stack and places the stack on the supply conveyor, where they enter the production line. The so-called destacker clamps the upper part of the stack and lifts it, such that only the lower insulation panel remains. With the help of a conveyor, this plate is passed through to the glue table. On the glue table, the plate is clamped over the long side, then the plate is provided with a layer of glue on one short side. Then the plate is pushed by the pusher, against the previous plate, towards the cutting machine. Because the plates are glued together, an ‘infinitely’ long plate is created under the cutting machine.

After gluing, the plate is pushed through to the water jet cutter. Here, the plate is cut into the necessary dimensions and shape. For cutting, the data from the BIM-file is used to automatically determine the optimal layout and limit the cutting loss. After that, the cut pieces come on a disposal conveyer. Here the cut panels are loaded onto a cart by an operator. This cart is then put in a lift, so the lift can take them upstairs. There, another operator takes the cart further into the factory, where the panels can be processed into the concrete products.

Watch a walkthrough, a timelapse of the installation and the functioning cutting line below.