As one of the UK’s foremost exponents of machining plastic components, Hertfordshire-based Plastic Turned Parts continues to invest in its future. The recent arrival of two Citizen sliding-head lathes means that the company’s total investment in 2018 exceeded £400,000.

The two new machines, a Citizen L20 with its LFV technology and a Citizen B16E sliding-head lathe, bring the total number of CNC lathes to 11, all of which are used solely for the machining of a wide range of plastic materials. Plastic Turned Parts fills the volume niche where injection moulding is not viable due to time and/or cost restraints, or where the plastic material is simply not capable of being moulded.
“Everything we machine here is plastic and we are able to achieve much greater dimensional accuracy, with no concerns over shrinkage,” says Jonathan Newis, managing director. “Three of our Citizen machines have LFV technology, which is ideal for machining plastics as swarf can be controlled precisely.”
Growth at Plastic Turned Parts is coming from old and new customers across a diverse range of industries. One particular client has increased its requirement for two specific components from 50,000 each, to 150,000 each, and one of the two new machines will be dedicated to that work. This increase is down to strong global sales among its customers and a trend in reshoring parts.
“Customers are seeing distinct advantages to having plastic parts machined rather than moulded, mainly around cost and timescale relating to manufacturing mould tools, but also the consistent quality that machining can bring,”
says Newis.
For further information www.plasticturnedparts.co.uk

The £7.5m advanced manufacturing technology centre opened recently by Queen’s University Belfast provides manufacturers in Northern Ireland and beyond with services that include consultancy, collaborative R&D, industrial training, and intervention for problem solving and cycle time reduction. Also, the facility can take manufacturing processes from product inception through to pre-production.

Acquiring the new equipment to populate the facility, which opened last year, took 21 months and saw the installation of seven new metal-cutting machine tools and a host of inspection and scientific equipment. The only lathe ordered in the first round of investment was a twin-spindle Index G220 turn-mill centre, supplied by Kingsbury, which was immediately put to use optimising a production process for an air bearing manufacturer in England whilst the company waits for its own G220 machine to arrive.
Head of the facility, Colm Higgins says: “The Index turn-mill machine is currently being used to evaluate the possibility of raising the efficiency of rough-turning stainless steel bar. In collaboration with our customer, we are hoping to develop a technique that replaces single-point turning with a process that instead uses a milling cutter in the B-axis spindle.
“Spreading the cutting load across several inserts rather than just one, as the bar is turning, would considerably increase the feed per tooth and hence metal removal rate, leading to reduced cycle times,” he adds. “Admittedly, accuracy and surface finish would not be as good, but for a roughing operation it does not matter. We are also reviewing other turn-milling processes for this manufacturer.”
The B-axis spindle on the G220 is positioned above the spindle centreline and is supplied with cutters from a 140-tool magazine. There is also a lower turret with 18 driven stations.
For further information www.kingsburyuk.com