Welcome evening at Matsuura

Matsuura Machinery Ltd recently held a welcome evening for the four successful candidates who comprise the company’s next intake of technical apprentices.

Their families were also welcomed along to find out more about Matsuura and the staff who will guide their sons through their time at the company. Long-serving members of staff from each department spent time with the young recruits and their families, providing them with a good understanding of Matsuura, its products and customers.
For further information www.matsuura.co.uk

Schunk introduces new general manager

After 18 years at the helm of Schunk Intec Ltd, Martin Kent has stepped down from his role as general manager to allow Marcel Machado to take the reins. Machado arrives from machine tool and plastic injection moulding specialist Romi Machine Tools.

Commenting upon his new position, Machado says: “The opportunity to work with a global brand like Schunk was too good to miss. Roles of such magnitude are generally only available when a company is in difficulty. However, Martin has done a fantastic job in growing the UK business, which is yielding year-on-year growth.
“Thankfully, Martin will be staying with Schunk in a managerial role and his expertise and support as we go forward will be critical to our continued success,” continues Machado. “My personal challenge is to keep a consistent pace of growth and intensify our efforts with regard to targeting new market segments and building new relationships and sales networks.”.
For further information www.gb.schunk.com

Storage system has space for 686 pallets

To create space and capacity for growth, a new 4000 sq m plant has been built on a 25,000 sq m site in the German town of Hettenleidelheim by Blum GmbH, a company that specialises in sheet metal working and switch cabinet manufacture.

Blum now holds its raw sheet material and finished parts in a high-density Uniline sheet storage system supplied by Kasto. The system, which has space for up to 686 pallets, ensures safe and reliable material handling and efficient supply to connected flat-bed sheet metal working machinery. Bending and folding, as well as manual and robotic welding, are also carried out on site.
For further information www.kasto.com

Blum celebrates major anniversaries

One of the world’s leading ‘in-machine’ measurement specialists is celebrating two big birthdays in 2018, with its UK operation 18 years-old and its German parent reaching half a century.

“We started out as a one-man engineering office when founder Günther Blum combined his studies in aerospace engineering with design work for machine tool manufacturers, eventually leading to him starting his own company in Schmalegg, near Ravensburg, Germany,” explains David Mold, who founded the UK subsidiary in 2000.
“The company has come a long way in 50 years and now employs close on 550 people across 16 operations worldwide,” he adds. “In order to mark the celebrations, we took a number of customers over to Blum Tech-Talk, a major event that gave them the opportunity to see how our probes and systems are built, and see the scale of our manufacturing facilities.”
For further information www.blum-novotest.com

Investment paying dividends at Axiom

Axiom Product Development Ltd is a new privately-owned company which has recently acquired the trade and assets of FRH Technical Engineering Ltd, a successful machining, rapid prototyping and tooling business based in West Sussex. Through its experience in the engineering sector, Axiom has made a number of key strategic appointments to put in place an expert management team with ambitious plans for expansion.

Frank Hay founded the original FRH business in 1952 as a pattern-making shop. The company remained a family business for three generations with Frank’s grandson, Adrian Hay at the helm for the past 20 years. Following the purchase, Axiom has kept the family connections strong with Tom Hay, great-grandson of the founder becoming a shareholder and production director of the new business.
Axiom Product Development specialises in the design and manufacture of high-quality tooling, patterns, components, manufacturing aids, and jigs and fixtures for the automotive, motorsport, defence, aerospace and marine industries. The company says it provides a quality-assured, technically capable engineering service to its customers. Five Formula One teams are on the Axiom/FRH books, making tooling for the cars’ carbon-fibre bodies. Some of this tooling has even been used to make the Haas F1 Team car, which of course was made on a Haas machine.
Since 1999, the company has been located in a purpose-built 1,200 sq m factory near Chichester, which houses eight Haas high-speed machining centres and a fully equipped toolmaking facility.
“Our first investment was a Haas VF-4,” explains production director Tom Hay. “We took on an experienced machinist who was familiar with a range of machines, but recommended we buy Haas. We haven’t looked back since.”
The company currently has 10 employees, including CAD designers, machinists and experts in prototype tooling.

“We do all of our own CAD modelling,” says Hay. “Also, we do a lot of work designing prototype tooling, which is then sent straight to the Haas control to make the part.”
The company’s most recent investment is a Haas VF-9 vertical machining centre. With a capacity of 2134 x 1016 x 762 mm, the machine provides the flexibility to make full-scale vehicle parts.
Hay explains the difference the Haas machines have made to the business: “In the past six years we’ve added five spindles to the workshop. This has massively increased our capacity and significantly moved us forward in terms of the technology available at our fingertips. We’ve also replaced some of our older machines with Haas. We find them very useable and their speed has made a huge difference, particularly the ‘Super Speed’ machines.”
Axiom’s five Haas Super Speed verticals are equipped with 15,000 rpm spindles, 24+1 side-mount tool changers and high-speed machining capability for extra-fast cornering.
“Using the newer machines, along with Vero software, has cut our large rough-cut cycle times from five hours to just 30 minutes,” states Hay. “And one engraving job has gone from one hour to 10 minutes. It’s an incredible difference.
“Maintenance is so much easier too, as the machines only have one type of lube and the cartridges last a long while,” he adds. “We spend less time maintaining and more time machining.
“We keep buying Haas because they’ve proved to be accurate and reliable. The control is so simple to use that it’s perfect for our apprentices too. Once you can run one machine you can run them all because the control is universal.
“The service we receive has been excellent. We haven’t needed repair work on the newer machines, and the staff are very helpful and quick to answer queries. The salesman and engineers are friendly, and not too pushy as we have found elsewhere. They have a real understanding of the industry and seem to know our requirements better than we do.”
It’s an exciting time for Axiom/FRH, which recently welcomed Alan Rendle-Eames to the team as managing director and shareholder. Rendle-Eames has over 17 years’ experience in the machine engineering sector and was formerly the project manager leading a team of five designers at Formaplex, a specialist machining and composites company. He previously spent 14 years at FRH Technical Engineering and is therefore the ideal person to oversee the running of the business.

Luke Newman has also joined the Axiom management team as technical director and shareholder. Newman is a qualified tool maker with over a decade’s experience in the sector, most recently as technical sales manager at Formaplex, where he specialised in growing the Formula One, automotive, defence, aerospace and energy sector accounts.
Axiom Product Development Ltd was set up by Michael Last and Clive Johnson, who are both experienced CEOs with complementary backgrounds in finance, mergers and acquisitions, engineering and manufacturing.
Last was CEO at Formaplex, where he oversaw a period of successful growth and expansion. He has extensive experience across a broad range of technology-driven businesses in multiple industries.
Johnson, a mechanical engineer by training, has managed and grown a range of businesses, from start-ups through to high-tech manufacturing businesses. He was CEO at Portsmouth-based Magma Structures, builders of the tallest composite superyacht masts in the world.
When asked about the future, Hay says: “It’s all about Haas. We have one non-Haas, but compared with a Haas machine featuring the same bed size, it takes up twice the floor area. We found the Haas machines slot into place very easily, making the best use of available space. We’re delighted with our choice; every product is a reflection of the team behind it and Haas truly excels in all areas.”
For further information www.haas.co.uk