Kerf Bridges Gap Between New & 2nd Hand Plasma Machines With New CombiCut

11 December 2013

Whilst the last four or five years have been extremely challenging for many manufacturers, in contrast the last six months has seen significant improvements and a greater level of confidence in the market for many manufacturers. Rochdale based Kerf Developments is one company that has seen significant growth and increased interest in both its new plasma cutting machines and their range of previously enjoyed, second hand machines.

Speaking about the market growth, Kerf Developments Sales Director, Mr Craig Walsh, highlighted the reasons for this: “Over the past five years we have seen manufacturers making do with existing machine tool installations and where possible the work is being farmed out to subcontractors. As a service based organisation this has created an increase in workload for the Kerf engineering support team, who have been called in to repair and upgrade older equipment that the original manufactures either do not want to support, or are unable to provide replacement parts.”

“With the green shoots of recovery beginning to appear both in the UK and Ireland, manufacturers are now considering replacing the older equipment and based on the performance of Kerf’s engineering support team, end users are increasingly choosing Kerf as their supplier for new machines. If you look at the second hand oxy-fuel and plasma market there are quite a few machines that wouldn’t be economically viable to repair. The Kerf machines however, have in the main been serviced on a regular basis and still represent a good entry point into the profiling market.”
“The main issue is that demand for second hand Kerf approved machines has completely outstripped supply. We currently have a shortlist of over twenty companies waiting for machines to become available, ranging from small oxy-fuel machines, through to large high definition plasma cutting systems.

“We see demand at the high end of the market for our new UltraSharp technology helping to fill the void at the entry level of the market. All ageing machines are returned to the engineering team at Kerf, where they are completely stripped down and inspected. The machines are then rebuilt and repainted back to their original specification and performance levels. We then supply and support these machines with on-site warranty and support services.”

“There will always be situations where Kerf do not have an ideal match on machine size and/or capability. To address this, we have developed a mid–range level of machines for oxy-fuel and plasma cutting. The CombiCut is available in a range widths and lengths to meet customers’ requirements, as can be the cutting specification.

We believe that this new product range fills the void between quality approved second hand equipment and our premium brand RUR and RUM high definition plasma cutting machine tools that have proven to be so popular over the years.”