Airbus to recruit 13,000

Building on a 2022 recruitment drive that added over 13,000 new staff members, Airbus is launching another round of hiring for 13,000 more employees with the skills necessary to support the company’s long-term projects. Approximately 25% of the recruitment will focus on jobs in fields such as decarbonisation, digital transformation, software engineering and cyber technology. Airbus will allocate a third of the total recruitment to young graduates, from which it plans to evolve future senior function and business leaders through technical and leadership development, networking and exposure to top management.
For further information www.airbus.com/en/careers

First anniversary of skills partnership

Two industrial voices in the Midlands have marked the first anniversary of a partnership aimed at tackling the skills crisis facing UK manufacturers.MSC Industrial Supply Co and Next Gen Makers formed a strategic partnership at the end of 2021 to help engineering and manufacturing firms identify skills gaps and improve the quality of their apprenticeship, talent development and retention schemes.

Next Gen Makers has established a group of over 50 engineering and manufacturing firms as part of its Engineering Apprenticeships: Best Practice Programme. It enables companies to share best practice about how to run successful apprenticeship schemes, while benchmarking their individual approaches to identify areas for improvement.
For further information www.nextgenmakers.co.uk

NAKAMURA PROVIDES MEDLEY OF PRODUCTIVITY GAINS

When Medley Precision won a contract to produce fire suppression assembly systems, the Mansfield-based subcontract manufacturer was initially producing the parts on a single spindle turning centre. However, as the required quantities quickly escalated, the company sought a better solution, turning for help to the Engineering Technology Group (ETG) and the Nakamura-Tome brand.

Like many subcontract manufacturers, Medley has a plant list of high-end machine tools that epitomises the quality demanded by its equally prestigious customers in the offshore, power generation, rail, medical, aerospace and defence sectors. With the aluminium fire mist nozzle systems consisting of a family of four components, the initial requirement was for 200 parts (x4) per month – a volume sustainable for the existing turning centre. However, the volume rapidly exploded from a total of 800 parts to 6000 (1500-off x4) and a solution was needed urgently.

Medley Precision’sproduction manager Stuart Solomon recalls: “The volume rapidly expanded and we looked at a sliding-head lathe, but one of the parts in the assembly was over 50mm diameter – beyond the realm of a slider. We then looked at a range of other manufacturers, but it was the pedigree, quality and the price-to-performance ratio of the Nakamura-Tome brand that sold it to us.”

The AS9100-certified Nottinghamshirecompany purchased a twin-spindle, twin-turret Nakamura-Tome WT15II turning centre at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic to cruise through the 6000 part per month order.

“For us, having the facility for one-hit, ‘lights-out’ machining via a barfed turning centre was crucial to our investment decision,” says Solomon.“Moving from a chucking single-spindle lathe to the Nakamura WT150II was a complete revelation. On the four parts, we more than halved the cycle times. The cycle time for the aluminium nozzle body was cut from 14 minutes to 6, while the time for the other three parts were cut from 8, 6 and 4 minutes, to 4, 3 and 2 minutes respectively. But this wasn’t just about cycle time improvements, we wanted to create a stable and efficient process.”

The results were immediately evident. Medley went from one operator permanently located on the single-spindle lathe to one operator on two machines. The quality and consistency of the parts improved vastly, as did the surface finishes. Notably, the same Nakamura stability that improved surface finishes and consistency also prolonged tool life significantly with operational costs falling sharply.

“With the cycle time savings, we could also introduce a deburring cycle for each part and still be more than 50% faster than before,” explains Solomon.“The deburring cycle eliminated the need for the parts to be put through a post-machining rumbler. Our operator would put 200 parts per hour into the rumbler for deburring while running a single-spindle machine full-time. Not only have we eradicated this additional process, but our consumable costs and the energy efficiency of running one machine instead of two is evident.”

With the first Nakamura-Tome WT150II proving such a success for Medley, the company once again turned to ETG when the order books in the turned parts department continued to bulge.

Says Solomon: “With the first Nakamura dedicated to 24 hour, five days a week production of the fire-suppression system, we were noticing our remaining single and twin-spindle turning centres were increasingly close to hitting full capacity – we needed another Nakamura.”

The manufacturer was witnessing a surge in rail work with an increasing demand for fuel systems and associated parts for trains in batches of 100+, as well as an increase in high-value oil and gas exploration parts such as flow regulators and pins in varying quantities from 20 to 150+ parts. Medley specified the Nakamura WY150F, a turning centre with a larger footprint and work area than the WT150II – a footprint that accommodates Y-axis cutting on both the upper and lower turrets.

“The Nakamura WY150F is a slightly larger machine than the WT150II, but it offers additional capabilities,” says Solomon.“The machine was only commissioned recently and we are already seeing the benefits. We swapped the single-spindle machine out and replaced it with the WY150F, as the single-spindle machine no longer meets our profile for a turned parts machine. Although we can acknowledge that the single-spindle turning centre is no match for a twin-spindle Nakamura in productivity terms, we are realising the true value of the Nakamura WY150F, as we are now transferring parts from our other twin-spindle turning centre.”

He continues: “We’ve just moved a part from our other twin-spindle machine to the Nakamura WY150F, cutting the cycle time from 15 minutes to less than 8 on a brass component for the rail industry. This cycle time saving is achievable by hitting both sides of the part at the same time, by using the upper tooling turret on the main spindle and simultaneously hitting the back end of the part in the sub-spindle with the lower tooling turret. By identifying this saving, we will be gradually moving more of our volume components to the new Nakamura and transferring our lower batch quantity work to the single-turret turning centre. Another factor that is making the Nakamura perform so well is the impressive technology and software within the control panel, as well as the Hainbuch work-holding system.”

With the first Nakamura WT150II turning centre dedicated to producing a family of fire-suppression components and the second Nakamura WY150F rapidly churning its way through capacity for Medley, the reduced lead times and improved component quality is bringing more work to the subcontract manufacturer.
For further information www.engtechgroup.com

High-feed mills for challenging applications

Milling challenging materials like tough steels, stainless steels, superalloys and titanium causes built-up or notched edges and broken inserts that increase tooling costs and cause unexpected downtime. To overcome these challenging ISO P, M and S materials, the next-generation Seco High Feed SP milling system features a combination of dedicated cutting geometries and insert grades, as well as optimised lead angles that combine to boost material removal rates, maximise chip evacuation and extend tool life.

According to Seco, one High Feed SP tool can handle a complete range of high-feed milling operations and materials. The tool optimises such operations as copy milling, ramping, pocketing, face milling and plunging to further reduce tooling inventories.

“Premature tool wear increases job costs and leads to unexpected machine downtime that lengthens production time,” says Benoît Patriarca, global product manager -high feed milling at Seco Tools. “The combination of dedicated cutting geometries and grades with optimised lead angles of the High Feed SP system allows for faster machining to shorten job turnaround times, while also providing a superior price-to-performance ratio.”

Designed for ease of use, High Feed SP milling tools provide simple fool-proof insert indexing that prevents operator mistakes, unexpected machine downtime and scrapped parts. Plus, users can quickly access product information through the Seco data matrix code scanning.

Seco offers a comprehensive range of High Feed SP tool sizes. The series includes:SP10 – two geometries, 10 grades, 32 to 63mm diameter; SP14 – two geometries, 10 grades, 50 to 100mm diameter; and SP18 – two geometries, 10 grades, 63 to 160mm diameter.
For further information www.secotools.com/milling

Major progress in external reaming of turned parts

The mass production of precise turned workpieces on multi-spindle automated lathes is subject to its own rules. In a hotly contested market, it is necessary to take every tiny opportunity for cost reduction, as Oberrindal-based WE Schultz, a customer of cutting tool specialist Mapal, can testify.

“As a true mass producer of comparably simple parts, we have to be able to compete in terms of price and quality with competitors from Asia here in Switzerland,” says Alexander Jaksch, deputy head of the turning shop.

A key lever in this ideology is the support of external partners such as cutting tool suppliers.
“Ultimately, the tools for a machine tool are as important as the tyres on a car,” states Jaksch.

The potential available here has been demonstrated to decision-makers at WE Schultz by a custom tool developed and subsequently optimised by Mapal.

“This project was about a part that seemed rather simple on the surface, a sleeve turned from solid with a diameter of almost 15 mm and a length of 10 mm,” says Emil Hugentobler, machine fitter at the Oberrindal plant. However, there are two crucial sticking points: a narrow diameter tolerance of 14.7 mm +12/-2 µm, and exceptionally low surface roughness of only Rz = 6 µm.

“In this situation we became aware of Mapal’s external reamers, particularly a custom tool for external reaming,” recalls Alexander Hildt,head of manufacturing. This external reamer is equipped with three guide pads and an adjustable indexable insert. The key advantage of the solution is that the outer dimensions of the workpiece are represented by the inner dimensions of the tool. Therefore, machine-related influencing factors such as increased play in the machine kinematics or the bearing of the spindle or chuckbecome practically irrelevant.
For further information www.mapal.com