Hertwich Engineering, a company of SMS Meer, has successfully commissioned its largest billet saw to date at Otto Fuchs KG in Meinerzhagen in Germany in September 2009.

Based on the CKS range of circular saws, this saw plant stands out for its sheer size and is designed to process cast billets with a diameter of 700mm and up to 7 tonnes in weight. The saw blade measures 1,920mm in diameter and is powered by a 149 kW drive motor.

Cut lengths are between 200mm and 2,000mm, besides test slices of 30mm thickness. All cut pieces are automatically pin marked and stacked into customer's standard frames.

The bulk of the production is blocks of 400mm to 2,000mm length, which are later forged into automotive and aerospace components. Shorter blocks 200 to 400 mm are cut as forging stock for alloy wheels.

Several special features are incorporated for instance feed control, which limits the cutting feed to 380 A power, for optimized performance. The cutting parameters for various alloys and billet diameters are furthermore stored in the data management system for user friendly operation.