MMC Contractors: Shaving off 6 days of cutting time with the PC900 RB.

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MMC is a pipe spool fabricator with multiple locations throughout the United States. Our designers worked with their team to build the very first PC900 RB, an affordable pipe cutter with a side-ways offload. The machine is heavy-duty, built to last, and designed to fit MMC’s shop layout. It is fully automated, allowing for limitless possibilities when used with HGG’s self-build ProCam software. MMC Contractors has seen incredible results since implementing the machine, including a significant reduction in cutting time and an increase in efficiency. Mark Janning, in charge of managing the fabshop, couldn’t be happier with the decision to partner with HGG and is thrilled to be building better parts than ever before. With HGG’s fully automated PC900 RB, MMC can’t imagine ever going back to their old ways. Mark: “The HGG is the heartbeat of the shop. It drives what gets done on a daily basis.”

Mark Janning: “At the time we met with HGG we worked with a more primitive machine to feed our welders, the need to make the next step into a fully automated system was apparent. We just needed to find the right machine to fit our shop. A guy that we worked with a lot from another company came to us and said “Hey, have you thought about HGG?” My colleague Matt said: “HGG would be great, but they don’t make our machine.” And he said “they like to meet with you. They want to build the machine you want.”

Quickly into the conversation with MMC the HGG team realized that indeed we did not offer a machine that ticked all the boxes for them. Their needs and wishes however were clear and matched up perfectly with our ambition to build such a machine.

Side-ways offload build for heavy duty work

The main problem MMC was facing was that because of their shop lay-out a ‘standard’ linear outfeed just didn’t fit. Their lay-out demaned for the offload system to be orientated side-ways. Having listened closely to their demands we made the decision to build a completely new machine from scratch. A machine that meets their, as well as our standards: Perfect cuts, save to operate and build to last. Mark: “They came here to our shop. He asked us what we wanted. We told him what we wanted. Drew up a little sketch of it on the dry and erase board about what this machine needed to look like to get into a fabshop like ours in the US market. And from there on we were sold.”

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Straight from CAD-design to the machine

At HGG we believe that our machines should compliment your workflow. It should give you the freedom to create without any compromises on quality. The combination of the machine together with HGG’s self-build ProCam software offers companies such as MMC limitless possibilities no matter how complicated their demand is. Matt, Fabshop foreman at MMC: “As far as how efficient we are now with the HGG machine, we have not found a limit on how many welders we can feed. We currently run 10 spots right now and they are full all the time. We build the exact same pipe rack, the old way and with the HGG machine and we shaved six days of cutting off our time from the old way to using the HGG. “

Matt continues: “Using the machine in conjunction with the software we are at no point that we were before. We design it in CAD, we push it through from CAD into the machine and then we pick which ones we want. Push a button. And it cuts it all at once. It only took our operator a couple of weeks to get the hang of it and he is already building better parts than what we could have built before. It seems scary but once you get the hang of it our guys don’t want to use anything else.”

Mark: “The quality of the cuts that have come off the machine has been phenomenal. We haven’t had anybody complain. None of our fitters, even down to the pickiest guy in the shop. Going from a hand cutting, to a primitive machine, to a fully automated machine that will do anything we could never go back.”