Pillow plate laser welding machine K2000S

K2000S single head laser welding pillow plate machine

One laser head. 2000 mm working width. Built for tank and vessel shops that weld their own jackets.

Most pillow-plate work in a fabrication shop is mixed: a milk-tank panel in the morning, a wine-tank jacket after lunch, a one-off falling-film plate on Friday. That is the job the Keppels K2000S is built for. One IPG fiber laser head covers the full 2000 mm (79 in) width. The operator loads two sheets, starts a product file and welds. There is no second head to synchronise and no dual-head program to maintain.

Buy the K2000S when 2000 mm panels matter and annual square meters do not yet justify two heads. If the shop later runs the same pattern all week, the next step is the K2000D — same width, two heads, higher output. The K2000S is the starting 2000 mm machine, not a cut-down dual-head system.

Who the K2000S is for

• Tank builders who want one 2000 mm jacket panel instead of splitting at 1500 mm.
• Shops making their first pillow plates in-house and still learning patterns.
• Jobbing fabricators: many drawings, short runs, frequent changeover.
• Plants that already buy plates and now want to weld their own dimple jackets.

It is the wrong machine if the only target is maximum m2 per hour on one repeating pattern. That is the K2000D.

What one head changes on the floor

With a single head the gantry program is simple: one weld path, one focus, one set of process data. Changeover between a coarse tank-jacket pattern and a dense ice-bank pattern is a file change, not a dual-head offset check. That is why K2000S fits mixed production.

Width stays 2000 mm. A full vessel jacket is still planned as 2000 mm panels. Length is a crane and table limit, not a laser limit. Sheets wider than 2000 mm are still split and joined on the vessel — same rule as the rest of the Keppels range.

Typical output sits in the 0.5 to 6 m2 per hour band and follows the pattern, not a dual-head bonus. Dense spot fields are slower. Open tank-jacket patterns are faster. Keppels quotes from a weld-time simulation on your DXF, not from a catalogue m2 figure.

K2000S at a glance

Bulk Milk Cooler pillow plate 500 x 500 mm welded on a K2000S:

From drawing to inflated jacket

The shop does not write a CNC programm. The jacket drawing is flattened to a weld layout: spots for pressure, borders to close the vessel, flow lines for water, glycol, refrigerant or steam. Keppels software turns that layout into a K2000S product file.

Sheets are cleaned and stacked. The hydraulic clamp holds the pair so the single laser can weld from one side. After welding the plate leaves the machine. Inflation, headers and rolling stay in the fabricator’s own process — the machine only makes the leak-tight weld pattern.

A handheld laser cannot do this work. It cannot clamp two sheets or follow a production spot field. Resistance-spot dimple tools cannot place free CAD borders and flow channels the way a programmed fiber laser can.

2000 mm single head or 1500 mm — or dual head

Pick width from the tanks you actually build. If most jackets fit 1500 mm, the K1500S is enough and the plate handling is lighter. If you regularly need a 2000 mm panel so the vessel has fewer longitudinal joints, that is the K2000S.

Dual head is a capacity decision, not a quality decision. Weld quality on K2000S and K2000D is the same process family: IPG fiber, hydraulic clamp, same software. Dual head only adds a second head on the same gantry so two paths run together. Expect about 40% more area on the same pattern — and a second head to service. If that extra area is not sold every week, stay on the K2000S.

Materials and jackets this machine is used for

Everyday work is stainless 304L and 316L tank jackets. The same cell welds higher alloys up to 254SMO and, after a weld trial, titanium or copper. Typical products from a K2000S cell: dairy silo jackets, wine and beer tanks, one-off process vessels, ice-bank plates and falling-film plates in 2000 mm width, and BSHE plates when the bank is built as 2000 mm elements.

What arrives with the machine

Keppels delivers a production cell, not a bare gantry: mechanical build, IPG fiber laser and optics, hydraulic clamp, Beckhoff CNC and HMI, programming software, stainless cabin, CE file, operator training and the pillow-plate process package so the first plates can be welded in the customer’s shop. Service is worldwide.

Ask for a K2000S quote

Send a typical jacket drawing. Keppels will say whether 2000 mm single head is the right cell, or whether 1500 mm or dual head fits the m2 better, and will simulate weld time on that drawing.