Since 2015 KAMPF Schneid- und Wickeltechnik GmbH & Co KG has been rapidly accelerating its integral digitisation. While the company initially focused its efforts in this direction on products and services, it is now equipping its production plants for the era of Industry 4.0 through its close innovation partnership with DMG Mori.

The KAMPF production site in Dohr clearly demonstrates the status of the digital innovation process. Here, DMG Mori ‘Planning Solutions’ has been in use for several months. “This has made us more efficient and flexible and, with a 30% reduction in throughput times, we can respond faster,” says Dr Stephan Witt, head of engineering & material management.

KAMPF has now initiated entry into its next evolutionary stage of digitisation with the installation of a CTV 250 vertical turning centre from DMG Mori.

“The result is greater integration and interaction between the office and shop floor, or rather between planning, machine tools and our employees,” explains Marc Jobelius, plant manager.

Thanks to the ‘Job Import’ function, the operator can import job orders directly from ‘Production Planning’ into the CELOS system and start processing immediately. Also, PDA information can now feed directly from the CELOS application connector.

In another joint KAMPF/DMG Mori pilot project, ‘real’ data from the shop floor is now being recorded in ‘Production Feedback’ and written into a central database via an integration layer. This will ultimately result in an extensive data pool from which realistic projected figures for previously unknown work steps will be calculated using algorithmic pattern-matching before transfer to new planning processes.

For further information
www.dmgmori.com

Based in Eastwood, near Nottingham, Trust Precision has become a leading Midlands provider of sliding-head turn-milled components. In 2011, managing director Nick Street acquired his first Citizen sliding-head machine, a Cincom M32-VIII model, which was fitted with a pneumatic guide bush that improves the machine’s ability to accept bar stock of variable quality and extends bar capacity from 32 to 35 mm diameter.

“With B-axis movement of one of the tool carriers and a total of nine cutters facing the sub-spindle, the machine was at the time more advanced than most other lathes on the market,” he says.

The machine proved ideal and there are now six similarly equipped models operating around the clock at the Eastwood facility, lights-out overnight. All are fitted with 130 bar high-pressure coolant and a 3.6-m bar magazine. The latest M32 addition, plus a 20 mm bar capacity Citizen L20-XII with programmable B axis and low-frequency vibration (LFV) chip-breaking software, arrived in January 2020.

Until the pandemic took hold in early 2020, aerospace contracts accounted for up to 60% of turnover, but the proportion is more like one-third of that now. New business from the medical industry offsets the current shortfall in commercial aerospace work due to Covid-19.
Fortuitously, the presence on the shop floor of the L20-XIILFV meant that its superior chip-breaking ability could provide more efficient turning of medical parts from stainless steel bar.
Street says: “LFV is a must if you are buying a Citizen lathe that offers this option. It’s a major technological advance, more so because it can be activated by the part program.”

For further information
www.citizenmachinery.co.uk