Liberty Safe Dials In The Right Combination -
Adds Two J-Series Waterjets

Liberty Safe, America's #1 producer of heavy duty home safes, gun safes, and commercial safes, found themselves in a position that any company would want to be in early 2013—accommodating a sizable increase in demand for their product. Ultimately, WARDJet was able to provide a solution that Liberty couldn’t find with any other waterjet manufacturer.

How a WARDJet Waterjet is Able to Cut Sheetrock with Unprecedented Speed & Uptime

Facing the escalating production demand, Liberty started exploring a high speed waterjet solution and reached out to us at WARDJet. We found out that cutting straight-lines in Sheetrock was the only straightforward part of this application. The team at Liberty was already cutting 24-hours a day, 6 days a week, but the older waterjet cutter they had was relatively slow and required two hours of maintenance every day to keep it working. And with down-time costing the company around $20,000 per hour, it was clear they needed a new machine.

We run these machines 24-hours a day, six days a week. I’m actually having trouble putting into words how well this machine is designed and built. There’s almost no comparison.

Jason Johnson, Liberty Safe Company

Between Some Sheetrock and a Hard Place

When we visited with Liberty, it became even more apparent that not only did they need a fast-cutting, high-volume machine; the entire system also had to be reliable in the face of tough environmental conditions. The key environmental concern being that, not only is gypsum a harsh material itself, but the cutting process results in dust, sludge and potential waterjet splash-back that could contaminate both the boards and the machines' various assemblies.

Flat out, it’s a dirty job—perhaps one of the harshest, most demanding waterjet applications we’ve seen. Lastly, the machine also needed to be operator friendly, providing workers with material handling features; specifically so they could efficiently load, cut, and unload four (stacked) 4’x10’ sheets of 5/8” Sheetrock at a time.

The Perfect Match - J-Series

Basically, this new machine needed to cut Sheetrock – a lot of it, and quickly. And do it all while running around-the-clock in Liberty Safe’s extreme conditions. Lucky for Liberty, we like challenges.

Given all the requirements, we introduced the Liberty team to our high-speed, water-only waterjet cutters, the J-Series and L-Series machines. Beyond speed, these machines are also designed to incorporate options for automation, material handling, and material removal systems. Liberty essentially admitted that they simply couldn’t find a comparable machine in the market, especially given WARDJet’s ability to tailor the design to their needs. The perfect match? A “tailored” J-Series (tailored being our term for a customized machine that doesn’t require much in the way of actual custom design, read more). In fact, the J-Series was such a good fit that Liberty bought two of them.

Liberty Safe at a Glance

History

Founded in 1988, Liberty Safe is headquartered in Payson, Utah. Liberty Safe employs approximately 500 people.

Brands

Liberty, National Security, Centurion

Product Lines

Home, gun, office and commercial safes

Production Demands

Liberty currently builds 450 safes a day in its state-of-the-art 300,000 square ft. factory. They have sold more than 1.9 million safes after 28 years of selling safes.

Previous Waterjet

Only ran at 250ipm and would require 2 hours of maintenance that costs Liberty over $20,000 an hour.

Waterjet Usage

Liberty uses their new waterjet to cut 1" - 1.5" Gypsum/Sheetrock, 4' x 8' Sheets, stacked 4 high at over 1,000ipm.

The Ultimate Sheetrock Waterjet Cutting Solution

The standard J-Series already cuts fast and comes with a conveyor system to move product in and out of the cutting area quickly. Most notably, Liberty was able to up their cutting speed to 1,000 ipm (from 250 ipm) with no compromise in accuracy, just by going to our J-Series. We also tailored the design of the loading table with material stops and a central divide to allow two sets of 4’x10’ Sheetrock to be loaded side-by-side on each machine. We also outfitted the cutting table with material laser sensors that automatically stop the conveyor when the sheets reached the proper position. From there, dual cutting heads outfitted with height sensors cut each stack of material at the same time. Ultimately, the set-up of Liberty’s machine means they can cut 8 sheets in a single run, for a total of 16 sheets across the two machines.

In addressing Liberty’s additional concerns, we packaged the dual 40-foot systems with safety features, a material removal system, and a combination of design features to eliminate any spray-back or general contamination of the Sheetrock and mechanical systems (including brush lip seals, baffle grate and a vacuum air system). The resulting systems quadrupled their cutting speed and provided a more durable and easy-to-use set of machines.

After being in use for 3 years, it’s been proven that the machine has increased production 300%; allowing the company to process the equivalent of two semi-trucks worth of Sheetrock every day. Not only that, but Liberty has seen minimal down-time saving them up to $40,000 a day. Even without the production increase, these two machines more than paid for themselves within a few months. These waterjets reshaped the company’s production capabilities as cited by Liberty’s production manager, Jason Johnson.

We run this thing hard. We’ve been running it all day for 3 years, so it’s almost like we’ve put 9 years [of wear] on it. The brushes (Brush Lip Seals) and covers have obviously done their job to prevent the drive from having any issues.

Jason Johnson, Liberty Safe Company

Apex 60

Production on Lock-Down

Liberty Safe Dials In The Right Combination -
Adds Two J-Series Waterjets

How a WARDJet Waterjet is Able to Cut Sheetrock with Unprecedented Speed & Uptime