Five Miyano machines installed

Burnett & Hillman has become a ‘brand name’ in its role as a major manufacturer of hydraulic adaptors and associated fittings that it supplies into around 90% of the world’s countries with a known customer base that exceeds 1000 names.

In addition, parts are sold through significant numbers of distributors and stockists. The company’s standard range includes over 4500 different machined parts, of which 99% are held in stock for next-day delivery. While its machine shop processes some 40,000 components a day, consuming 200 tonnes of mild steel a month, these contribute to a massive year-on-year tally of over 10 million individual machined parts, of which a quarter are exported.
Nestling in the Somerset village of Wrington, this family-owned business still uses multi-spindle automatics to meet its larger volumes. However, for smaller demands and batch sizes, typically from 1 to 250, a progressive addition to the production capability has been the installation of turn-mill centres, including five Miyano multi-axis machines from Citizen Machinery UK.
Following the reliable and consistent performance capability obtained from the first 12-axis Miyano ABX-51TH3 fixed-head turn-mill centre with two spindles and three all-driven 12-station tool turrets, three further smaller capacity Miyano BNA-42GTY machines arrived in 2015 and 2017, while in October 2018, the fourth BNA-42GTY was commissioned. The company has invested some £500,000 over the past two years.
Says general manager Dan Burnett: “We face ever increasing demands for non-standard parts, smaller batches and in-house store top-ups. Due to the demanding specification requirements of customers, quality is the prime requisite, followed by delivery.”
For further information www.citizenmachinery.co.uk

Roemheld to focus on workholding

A newly developed range of compact, three- and four-sided tower clamping systems manufactured by the Roemheld group’s Hilma division in Hilchenbach will be launched on the stand (E255) of Roemheld UK.

Intended for use on four- and five-axis vertical machining centres, as well as horizontal-spindle machines, the steel monobloc SCT towers, which are either mechanically or hydraulically actuated, are sealed against swarf and other contamination. Applications range from use on manually loaded machines, through twin-pallet-change centres, up to fully automated flexible manufacturing systems.
For further information www.roemheld.co.uk

Machine investment reaches £400,000

As one of the UK’s foremost exponents of machining plastic components, Hertfordshire-based Plastic Turned Parts continues to invest in its future. The recent arrival of two Citizen sliding-head lathes means that the company’s total investment in 2018 exceeded £400,000.

The two new machines, a Citizen L20 with its LFV technology and a Citizen B16E sliding-head lathe, bring the total number of CNC lathes to 11, all of which are used solely for the machining of a wide range of plastic materials. Plastic Turned Parts fills the volume niche where injection moulding is not viable due to time and/or cost restraints, or where the plastic material is simply not capable of being moulded.
“Everything we machine here is plastic and we are able to achieve much greater dimensional accuracy, with no concerns over shrinkage,” says Jonathan Newis, managing director. “Three of our Citizen machines have LFV technology, which is ideal for machining plastics as swarf can be controlled precisely.”
Growth at Plastic Turned Parts is coming from old and new customers across a diverse range of industries. One particular client has increased its requirement for two specific components from 50,000 each, to 150,000 each, and one of the two new machines will be dedicated to that work. This increase is down to strong global sales among its customers and a trend in reshoring parts.
“Customers are seeing distinct advantages to having plastic parts machined rather than moulded, mainly around cost and timescale relating to manufacturing mould tools, but also the consistent quality that machining can bring,”
says Newis.
For further information www.plasticturnedparts.co.uk

XYZ in control

The next generation of ProtoTRAK control systems from XYZ Machine Tools will exhibited for the first time on stand J210.

Three ProtoTRAK controls have been developed. The KMX is specifically for company’s range of turret mills, while the RMX and RLX supersede the existing ProtoTRAK controls on the company’s bed mills and lathes respectively. At Southern Manufacturing the ProtoTRAK KMX will be shown on an XYZ KMX 2000 turret mill, with the RMX ProtoTRAK on an XYZ RMX 3500 bed mill and an XYZ RLX 425 ProTURN lathe highlighting the features and benefits of the RLX control.
For further information www.xyzmachinetools.com

University chooses Index turn-mill centre

The £7.5m advanced manufacturing technology centre opened recently by Queen’s University Belfast provides manufacturers in Northern Ireland and beyond with services that include consultancy, collaborative R&D, industrial training, and intervention for problem solving and cycle time reduction. Also, the facility can take manufacturing processes from product inception through to pre-production.

Acquiring the new equipment to populate the facility, which opened last year, took 21 months and saw the installation of seven new metal-cutting machine tools and a host of inspection and scientific equipment. The only lathe ordered in the first round of investment was a twin-spindle Index G220 turn-mill centre, supplied by Kingsbury, which was immediately put to use optimising a production process for an air bearing manufacturer in England whilst the company waits for its own G220 machine to arrive.
Head of the facility, Colm Higgins says: “The Index turn-mill machine is currently being used to evaluate the possibility of raising the efficiency of rough-turning stainless steel bar. In collaboration with our customer, we are hoping to develop a technique that replaces single-point turning with a process that instead uses a milling cutter in the B-axis spindle.
“Spreading the cutting load across several inserts rather than just one, as the bar is turning, would considerably increase the feed per tooth and hence metal removal rate, leading to reduced cycle times,” he adds. “Admittedly, accuracy and surface finish would not be as good, but for a roughing operation it does not matter. We are also reviewing other turn-milling processes for this manufacturer.”
The B-axis spindle on the G220 is positioned above the spindle centreline and is supplied with cutters from a 140-tool magazine. There is also a lower turret with 18 driven stations.
For further information www.kingsburyuk.com