More than £600,000 has been invested by HPC Services on a trio of Nakamura turn-mill centres from the Engineering Technology Group (ETG).

The company is now operating 45 CNC milling and turning machines at its Ilkeston facility, while the machining side of the business employs 80 of the firm’s 150 workers and has a turnover of £8m.
Now commissioned, the three Nakamura machines (two WT150s and a WT100) are boosting production throughput. The WT150II provides up to 26 kW of cutting power for shaft work with synchronised spindles, while the power of the driven-tool motor is suited to heavy cutting with small tools.
Managing director Paul Cobb says: “The WT150 has twin spindles and twin turrets, which makes it hugely versatile. As a subcontractor you don’t really know what is going to come through the door on any day, so these machines are almost the optimum for us. We mostly use them for making milled parts, in medium-sized production runs from a few hundred to a few thousand parts – that’s the sweet spot for us.
“Our Nakamura machines are incredibly reliable, accurate and very quick,” he continues. “Compared with the machine they’re replacing, which was turning out a part in seven minutes 35 seconds, they can do it in just three minutes 50 seconds. The machines can operate on components up to 65 mm in diameter, which is quite large, and we have linked them up to an automatic rotary conveyor. As a result, we can run them 24-hours a day on aluminium or brass parts, and around 18 hours a day on stainless steel. We just feed the CAD details into the machines and away they go.”
For further information www.engtechgroup.com