The disruption of the pandemic for the aerospace supply chain has been catastrophic for some businesses, and for those that remain the challenge is to ramp up production to meet returning demand. Coventry-based Harris RCS Precision Engineering is one business that has successfully navigated this period and is now looking to take full advantage of the upturn with the recent installation of a Nakamura-Tome WT100F from the Engineering Technology Group (ETG).

Managing Director Graham Harris says: “Primarily working in the aerospace industry, we were inevitably impacted by the pandemic, and we’ve had to ramp up our production with less staff. This has given us the impetus to invest in new technology and automation to meet the rapid upturn in demand. With several twin-spindle, single-turret machines and a twin-spindle, twin-turret machine on the shop floor, we needed to accelerate productivity further and reduce shop-floor operations by completing more jobs in one hit. The Nakamura-Tome WT100F was the perfect solution.”

Commissioned at the start of the year, the WT100F has rapidly made an impact on the machining of aerospace components such as valves, unions and fixtures for wings, fuel control systems and undercarriage. Machining everything from aluminium, stainless steel, Inconel, nickel alloys and other aerospace-grade materials, the Nakamura has increased productivity by upward of 80%.

“We have one operator running two machines in many instances, but with the twin-spindle, twin-turret configuration on the WT100F, it’s like having one operator running four machines as the Nakamura undertakes simultaneous machining on the main and sub-spindle to slash our cycle times,” says Harris. “What’s equally important is that we have significantly reduced our secondary operations.”
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