New MTA president’s charity named

The Manufacturing Technologies Association (MTA) traditionally supports two charities during the year and, for the first time, the president’s charity has been chosen as the Children’s Hospital Charity, supporting Sheffield Children’s Hospital to provide world-class care to children the world over. One of three stand-alone children’s hospital in the UK, Sheffield Children’s Hospital provides world-class care to 260,000 children each year. The charity, chosen by MTA president Tony Bowkett, works to enhance Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and its reputation in the care, prevention and cure of illness in children.

For further information www.mta.org.uk

300 members of Tomorrow’s Engineers Code

The Tomorrow’s Engineers Code, managed by EngineeringUK, is celebrating an important milestone: the community now has over 300 members dedicated to increasing the diversity and number of young people entering engineering and technology careers.United by this common goal, the collaborative community has expanded to include organisations from across the engineering, technology and education sectors. Aiming to improve their engineering outreach programmes for young people, members share knowledge and best practice, and commit to four pledges to shape their engagement activities and strategy.

For further information www.code.tomorrowsengineers.org.uk

NCMT reaches milestone

NCMT is celebrating 60 years of trading. The company was formed in 1964 by Gerry Gray after he won the exclusive right to market Japanese-built Makino machining centres and spark-erosion machines in the UK and Ireland, an agreement that persists to this day.In 1976, a second agency was added to sell Okuma machine tools, also from Japan, into the same markets. The move introduced extra CNC machining centres to NCMT’s portfolio as well as CNC lathes and grinders. In other news, NCMT will stage a pre-MACH open house at its Coventry showroom on 7-8 February.

For further information events@ncmt.co.uk

FourJaw doubles customer base

FourJaw Manufacturing Analytics says that the number of manufacturers using its plug-and-play machine monitoring platform more than doubled in 2023. In addition, the company’s installed base – the number of machines monitored by manufacturers using FourJaw technologies – increased almost threefold. FourJaw’s platform captures real-time production data from machinery and combines it with operator feedback to generate insights that improve productivity, operational efficiency, and financial and environmental performance. More than 120 manufacturing businesses worldwide now use FourJaw. 

For further information www.fourjaw.com

From seven operations down to two

It is only within the past five years that Nuneaton-based subcontractor Oaston Engineering, which specialises in work for the aerospace and biotechnology industries, has embraced sliding-head turning. July 2018 saw the arrival of the firm’s first sliding-head lathe, a 20 mm bar capacity Cincom L20-VIIILFV from Citizen Machinery UK. It was followed in October 2022 by a second, larger model, a 32 mm capacity Cincom L32-VIIILFV.

Oaston Engineering’s managing director Sean McCarthy says: “We were always led to believe that sliding-head lathe operation was a dark art and that you need to produce large batch quantities, say 50,000, to justify setting them for a new run. We had been looking at the technology since MACH 2008 and, a decade later, when the Cincom L20 was delivered, we discovered the myths were untrue.”

Oaston Engineering had a particular job in mind for the Cincom L32: the production of a light aircraft pump camshaft from martensitic stainless steel.

The component, which is produced from 1.25-inch bar, formerly needed seven separate operations: outside diameter turning and grooving; milling on a machining centre; two separate turning operations in offset fixtures to machine the cams to a dimensional tolerance of 0.07 mm; drilling a longitudinal bore on a machining centre; cross drilling a tooling hole in another operation; and off-site grinding of two spigots to within 0.015 mm.

The camshaft produced in this way required a total of 18 minutes 30 seconds of cutting time, plus inter-machine handling, as well as 30 to 60 seconds for deburring and more time for inspection at each stage. Now, six of the operations are performed in one hit in less than 15 minutes on the Cincom before the part goes out for grinding.

For further information www.citizenmachinery.co.uk