In 2016, Surrey-based GPR Ltd made its first strides from three to five-axis machining, and it was cutting tool manufacturer Industrial Tooling Corporation (ITC) that fully supported the subcontractor in selecting the optimum cutters for the new machine. Now, ITC has stepped in again to solve a new challenge.

GPR managing director Vernon Ward says: “We won an initial order for 20 sets of mobile phone test-bed housings and each set consisted of six parts. However, with upward of 300 holes per set, we had an average of three drill failures per set. We persevered with existing HSS drills for a while and then won an extended order for 80 sets of the mobile phone test-bed housings, so we called ITC.”
ITC immediately suggested the Widia range of VDS solid-carbide through-coolant drills to eliminate tool failures and the associated time and costs involved with changeovers.
“We completed the entire batch of 80 sets, which consisted of 480 parts and approximately 24,000 holes, with a single set of drills,” says Ward. “After the project had finished, the VDS drills were still in an ‘as-new’ condition. The drills may have been more expensive than our previous tools, but they paid for themselves by the time we machined 20 parts.”
When GPR won another order for drilling oil well monitoring equipment, ITC again recommended the VDS drilling range. The batch of 10 Duplex bars required four 10 mm deep holes per part and, with a pre-drilling and drilling cycle, the complete drilling time was 4 minutes 58 seconds per component. Aiming to reduce this cycle time, the VDS drills reduced the cycle time to just 44 seconds, a cycle time reduction of over 400%.
For further information www.itc-ltd.co.uk