Not a technician - just an accountant but I need to estimate a Kimla

Hi all,
My name is John. I'm an accountant at a group of box makers. I build and maintain the machines for all of our locations. Through 20 years of watching I can tell you how fast labels are made, how fast thermoform parts can be made and certainly how fast any box can be made. One of our locations is losing a supplier so they have a Kimla on the water and they have also have a Baileigh Milling Machine coming in. Our thermoformer uses several CNC machines for cutting the aluminum molds or renboard but they are doing pretty standard stuff. This new Kimla is for cutting and routing out foam both closed and open cell. With foam you can't die cut more than 2 inches or you get concavity. So we are going to take a plank of 84x48x4 2lb density foam and cut it into 75 pieces and route out the center of each piece down to 3 inches. I have to figure out how many inches per minute this Kimla can cut. I watched all the videos (in a foreign language) but I could not find how fast this thing will go. I'm assuming their vacuum transfer will hold open cell foam in place. Any suggestions I should use as a starting point would be greatly appreciated. I then have to translate inches per hour into thousand pieces per hour as that is the only way box making software works. Thanks for any suggestions and I already got some good ideas from reading through your forums. John

It would be useful to know exactly which Kimla machine you're getting to be able to look up the specs. in order for someone to be able to give you some speed figures. Holding down open cell foam might be a problem, it will depend on just how open it is (surface sealing would help a lot) and how powerful your vacuum system is.

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Originally Posted by Voicecoil

It would be useful to know exactly which Kimla machine you're getting to be able to look up the specs. in order for someone to be able to give you some speed figures. Holding down open cell foam might be a problem, it will depend on just how open it is (surface sealing would help a lot) and how powerful your vacuum system is.

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Unfortunately I just approved the capital request and for both machines it was only 120k including delivery. I didn't t find out until it was already on the sea. I know they are not getting water or laser cutting nor would I assume any front load or rear takeoff capabilities. I did confirm vacuum transfer. I would assume it is equivalent to a CAD table except with a z axis and certainly much faster cutting capability. I also know from some personal hobbies that spindle speed generates a lot of heat - I just burnt some beautiful zebra wood at home as I set the RPMs way too high. Foam is highly flammable as it has its own air supply This is typical when you work for a sales driven organization. They want a price for a customer but I don't even know if they purchased the proper tooling to go with it. I understand this is a crazy request. Someone asked me once to develop a quote form for a large production HP color printer. What I didn't know at the time as digital printing was something new was that the ink heads had to do a complete reset back to the first position before it would print the next line. Management didn't like the answer that the only money being made was by HP and that this was a hobby piece of equipment at best as it did 16 sheets per hour. I'm sorry I wish I knew more. John

If You approved a capital request you know the po and contact details.
And typically the exact po nr and machine specs as per manufacturer references.
Please provide these specs.