Machining

Back in November 2017 it was a change in the right direction for the UK’s largest independent steel stockholder, Barrett Steel Group as it installed a KASTOvariospeed C15 automatic circular sawing machine alongside two bandsaws at its engineering division in Maghaberry, Northern Ireland. It has increased sawing productivity, reduced delivery lead-times significantly, improved accuracy and lowered cost per cut.

The first was wireless data communication from an Iemca barfeed, allowing much more information to be transmitted compared with a hard wired connection. Andrea Psotti, Iemca’s Area Sales Manager assists 1st MTA in looking after the UK sales market, and explained that the solution is unlike those offered by others in that it allows the customer to integrate the equipment more conveniently. Instead of having to be connected into a factory’s intranet to achieve wireless data flow, the Iemca barfeed and lathe communicate via the cloud.

Multi-axis machining company, RSM is leveraging the benefits of Universal Robots supplied by RARUK Automation to load and unload its machine tools. A mix of seven UR5 and UR10 robots have helped Rousant Sherwood (RSM) maximise the productivity of its workforce by automating repetitive tasks and allowed the company to bid for contracts which would have otherwise been unprofitable.

Over 140 digitiser cards from Spectrum Instrumentation are being used in the machine protection systems of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The cards are used to check that the particle beams have been accurately deflected. Incredible precision is required for this as two high-energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light in opposite directions in the 27km LHC accelerator ring. They are then made to collide at four locations around the ring for runs of several hours.

The latest safe-lock pull out protection system is becoming industry standard, HAIMER the company behind the product claim. The HAIMER Safe-Lock pull out protection system ensures safe cutting tool clamping. Special drive keys in the tool holder perfectly match the spiral shaped grooves on the cutting tool shank, thus creating frictional clamping forces and a positive locking form-fit. This effectively prevents the cutting tool from pulling out of the tool holder. Furthermore, it increases the productivity through faster permissible speeds and increased tool life.

  Despite the advances in automation, manufacturing switchgear can be very labour intensive. There is still a huge amount of manual work involved in cutting and machining busbars, support rails and cable ducts.

Not long after the delivery of a Harrison Alpha 1550XS CNC lathe, during summer 2017, Fairbrother and Grimshaw saw its growing reputation spread even further, resulting in an upturn in orders, utilising the Alpha lathes versatility for taking on larger capacity mill/turn jobs. Fairbrother and Grimshaw are a Lancashire sub-contract engineering business who specialise in CNC milling, turning and boring, from their facility in the Cherry Tree area of Blackburn.

Moving its prismatic machining capability forward with the purchase of its first 5-axis vertical-spindle machining centre (VMC), East Sussex-based subcontractor, Dicker Precision, is now using the German-built Spinner U620 Compact, which is supplied as a turnkey package with tooling, the initial part program and training by UK and Ireland agent, Whitehouse Machine Tools, Kenilworth.

PDJ Vibro at MACH this year will focus on the depth of experience and expertise it offers to customers. Now in its second generation and run by managing and technical directors David and Paul Hurley respectively, the company was established in 1983 by their father John, the current chairman. With an eye to succession, passing this knowledge down to David's son Tom and Paul's two sons, James and Adam, and acclimatising them to the world of manufacturing will form an important part of the event.

Customers are now being offered a new method to receive small volume parts with greater expediency than normally possible, from Optimas Solutions. This service has been enabled by the installation of a Takamaz XY120 Plus CNC lathe, which can quickly mill a range of parts in quantities up to 5000 pieces.