HPC Services of Ilkeston has ordered the latest Cincom L20-VIIILFV turn-mill centre from Citizen Machinery UK. By including Low Frequency Vibration (LFV) machining technology in the specification, HPC’s managing director Paul Cobb maintains his business will get a lead in the market by boosting the production of materials such as 321 corrosion-resistant stainless steel and 416 chromium steel alloy stainless steel, and plastic-type materials.

“This machine will enable us to competitively quote on new work that we would normally decline, and will give us additional capacity as we build up production for our in-house developed water-based fire-suppression system,” he says.
LFV enables selected operational sequences to be programmed at the machine control to impart the size of chip to be produced. The ability for the operator to control the size of chip eliminates problems such as ‘bird nesting’, improves depth-of-cut and surface finish, delays the onset of built-up edge on tooling and aids the management of swarf. LFV can be applied to turning, profiling, facing, taper cutting and interrupted cutting sequences, plus drilling and even thread cutting.
HPC has currently 10 Citizen Cincom machines installed, with the most recent Cincom L12-VII ordered from the Citizen Machinery stand at MACH 2016. This is currently producing components as part of a 40,000 a year contract. A plastic tube, 110 mm in length, is turned and a hole produced through its length to a concentricity tolerance of 0.05 mm TIR.
“So productive is the machine that we have reduced our cycle time from over a minute to just 12 seconds,” says Cobb.
For further information www.citizenmachinery.co.uk