In recent years, oxy-cutting has come to the fore, consuming a lion’s share of all the oxygen used by the welding and cutting industries. Among the processes for preparing plate material for welded fabrication, flame cutting takes a prominent role in almost any engineering industry, including metal making, shipbuilding, boiler making, locomotive building, building construction, etc.

Based on semi-automatic and automatic machines, it has brought with it unprecedented production rates. The basic trend in today’s flame technology is towards the ultimate in process mechanisation: the use of special-purpose equipment of high efficiency and automatic process monitoring and control. In India today, numerous types of cutting machines are available, ranging from simple hand-steered blowpipes to the most sophisticated, special-purpose profile cutting machines using photoelectric cells.