Aerospace gear specialist brings EDM in-house

Aldershot-based FT Gearing supplies the global defence and aerospace sectors with gears, miniature gearboxes and safety-critical components for wing-surface actuators, engine controls, instrumentation and fuel pumps. Many years ago, the manufacturer tried broaching the bore profiles in steel worm shafts to transmit the drive to thrust reversers, but the length-to-diameter ratios were too high and the tools broke frequently.

So the company put the work out to a wire EDM subcontractor in the Midlands. The service was expensive, partly because the firm needed to have Nadcap (National Aerospace and Defence Contractors Accreditation Program) approval, which is a requirement of primes such as Boeing and Airbus, as well as tier-one aerospace companies, all of which FT Gearing supplies.
Today, the situation has been turned on its head following the arrival over an 18-month period of three Makino wire EDM machines at an FT Gearing satellite facility close to the company’s main facility. The machines were supplied by NCMT, UK agent for the Japanese machine builder. Within six months of the first arriving, the gear specialist had gained Nadcap approval, while the latest EDM machine installed mid-2017 provides capacity for internal development projects and a subcontract wire-EDM service.
Managing director Graham Fitzgerald, who started the business with his father Des in 1978, says: “We chose U3 wire eroders from Makino after we employed a skilled EDM machinist that has a lot of experience operating machines of the same make and rates them highly. He says that ISO programming on the Fanuc-based control is far easier than on some other EDM machines that employ two languages; the macros are simpler to create and operations like rotation and mirror imaging are straightforward.”
For further information www.ncmt.co.uk

Trumpf buys ultrashort pulsed laser specialist

Trumpf reports that it has acquired the laser manufacturer Amphos, which was founded in 2010 as a spin-out from RWTH Aachen and the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT.

Amphos develops and produces ultrashort pulsed lasers with high output power for manufacturing and research applications. The key to Amphos lasers is InnoSlab technology, which was co-developed by the company’s founders while still a part of ILT. InnoSlab will allow Trumpf to open up an entirely new range of parameters for its ultrashort pulsed lasers.
Amphos develops ultrashort pulsed lasers that feature output power between 200 and 400 W. The company also offers high-power lasers for research applications that have an output as high as 1.5 kW. Headquartered at the Herzogenrath technology centre in Aachen, Amphos and Trumpf agreed to not disclose the purchase price.
For further information www.trumpf.com

Sodick EDM offers staying power at Foremost

Foremost Specialist Products, a Derby-based subcontract manufacturer of precision engineered components, has invested in a new Sodick ALC600G CNC wire-erosion machine from Sodi-Tech EDM. Acquired to help the company take on the “complex and awkward parts that no else wants to tackle”, among the jobs being successfully accommodated by the machine are stainless steel tubular stem guides for power generator turbines.

“We won a contract for an awkward, tricky part and our existing EDM couldn’t offer four-axis cutting – and didn’t have enough memory to take on the job anyway,” explains the company’s engineering director Joe Walker. “This contract meant we would be tasked with producing a number of cross-holes in stainless steel stem guides for turbines used in power generators. The holes are angled in two planes are must be held to extremely tight tolerances.”
Although Foremost had never owned a Sodick EDM before, when Walker scrutinised the marketplace for a suitable machine capable of processing the stem guides and other complex parts, he was drawn to Sodi-Tech EDM.
“I really liked the feel of the Sodick ALC600G – such were its capabilities that it felt like we’d be moving from a small hatchback to a supercar,” he says. “We are finding the machine offers so many benefits – it is making particularly easy work of the stem guides. Some of the guides have six or eight holes, typically measuring from 1.3 to 3.0mm in diameter, but one of the latest has 28. The Sodick ALC600G gives us peace of mind that the work will be completed efficiently and accurately, every time. Moreover, I would say the new machine is up to 50% quicker on many jobs than the machine it replaced.”
For further information www.sodi-techedm.co.uk

EDM specialist expands milling capacity

EDM subcontractor RST Engineering decided 20 years ago that a manual tool change Hurco Hawk, due to the ease of shop floor programming on its twin-screen control system, was the best CNC milling machine to take over from hand-operated mills for manufacturing copper electrodes, jigs and fixtures. A 10-minute demonstration on the Hurco stand at the MACH 1998 machine tool show was enough to convince RST’s management that the power and simplicity of the software made it an obvious choice for this type of work.

The machine proved so fit-for-purpose that RST had no hesitation in replacing it in 2002 with an automatic tool change, three-axis Hurco VM2 machining centre, which was equipped with a similar proprietary Ultimax twin-screen control as well as a 4th axis Nikken table.
Over the next decade, the subcontractor milled and drilled more and more of its customers’ components on the machine, work that it was previously having to put out to another firm, thereby saving money and enjoying more control over production scheduling and delivery lead times. The VM2 is now dedicated again to machining only electrodes, however, and is sited in the EDM shop alongside four wire erosion machines, the same number of die sinkers and a pair of EDM hole-drilling machines.
More recently, a £300,000 investment included the purchase of a CMM and a Hurco VMX60SRTi five-axis machining centre of B-axis spindle design and 1524 x 660 x 610 mm capacity. It joined a smaller five-axis Hurco VMX30Ui of swivelling trunnion design purchased two years earlier and a larger three-axis Hurco VM30i installed the year before to cope with a wider variety of component sizes.
For further information www.hurco.co.uk

Neher has its finger on the VPulse

Ostrach-based family business Neher, which develops special tools for the international manufacturing industry, recently opted to invest in a VPulse 500 wire-erosion machine from Vollmer. Developed by the Biberach-based sharpening specialist, the Vollmer machine allows Neher to manufacture its PCD-tipped tools with a high surface finish.

“We manufacture customised diamond tools for our customers, which generally have complex geometries, particularly when it comes to combination tools such as milling cutters and reamers”, states Gerd Neher, managing director of the Neher Group. “For this we rely on erosion technology from Vollmer and recently decided to purchase the fully automated VPulse 500.”
Neher uses wire erosion for processing its PCD cutting edges. The process is suitable for tools such as contour cutters or stepped reamers that have complex geometries. With the Vollmer VPulse 500 wire-erosion machine, even the tiniest inner radii can be machined precisely. Typically, special tools require machining times that range from 30 minutes for simple reamers up to 20 hours for complex combination tools.
“Thanks to the fully automated VPulse 500 we can work in single-shift operation and still manufacture around the clock, and over the weekend”, states Anton Juric, application engineer at Neher. “For this, we use the external tool memory of the wire-erosion machine where we can store a total of 16 different tools.”
Neher is currently planning on purchasing another VPulse 500 to boost its targeted level of growth. In 2017, Neher concluded a joint venture with the American company Star SU from Michigan. With locations in the USA, Canada, Mexico and Brazil, the plan is to now use the new VPulse 500 on site in the USA.
For further information www.vollmer-group.com