In the past six years, Poole-based Allied Tooling has more than doubled its turnover to over £7m. Central to this expansion has been a company re-branding, the introduction of PCD round tools and saw blades, and becoming the UK’s exclusive AKE saw blade partner.

Allied today supplies and services over 6000 tools and saw blades each month. To help facilitate this output, the 60+ employee manufacturer for the woodworking, kitchen, marine, construction, composite, aerospace, automotive and motorsport sectors, has ramped up its investment in grinding and erosion machines from Vollmer.

The first Vollmer machine arrived in the 1990s and the company has purchased more than 20 Vollmer models over the years. The latest tranche of Vollmer machines commenced when PCD tooling went from being an outsourced solution to a serious addition to the product range. Identifying this industry trend at an early stage, Allied invested in two Vollmer QXD250 disc erosion machines with the H5 28-tool automation solution in June 2018 and a VPulse 500 wire EDM in March 2023.

“While the QXD 250 is perfect for TCT saws up to 320 mm diameter, it also has the flexibility to process all our PCD end mills, drills and cutters,” explains Allied’s managing director Wes Hacker. “The arrival of the QXD reduced our lead times by more than two weeks on bespoke tool solutions.”

The same HC5 28 tool external workpiece storage system is also present on the VPulse 500 machine that arrived in March 2023.

“We purchased the VPulse 500 for its flexibility,” says Hacker. “The new VPulse EDM generator significantly improves productivity and this means we can run a batch of 20+ tools lights-out with exceptional efficiency – further supporting our ambition to compress lead times.”

More information www.vollmer-group.com