Largest-ever Radicon order

Industrial gearbox manufacturer Radicon has supplied its largest-ever order. The Elland-based company sent eight gearboxes to Hongsa Power in Laos as part of a $1.5m deal.

Radicon was introduced to Hongsa Power Company, the largest power provider in Laos, by a long-standing customer in Thailand, who recommended the West Yorkshire company. Each drive package weighs over 25 tonnes and all have been mounted on baseplates with brakes and lubrication systems.
For further information https://radicon.com/

Ficep Valiant with SN100 saw

Aimed at the steel industry, Ficep can now offer its Valiant three-spindle CNC drilling line with an SN100 saw, which has been developed by a specialist team comprising 20 of the company’s technologists.

Mark Jones, who has been at the helm of the company for the past two decades, says resilience is the steel industry’s secret weapon, and in the next decade the industry needs to focus on tackling the big issues that have been looming up on the sector for some time.
He says: “From the need to reduce environmental impact, skill shortages and the transition to smart factories, including widespread automation, we are on the brink of deep-seated change. The peaks and troughs of the past 20 years have given the steel industry a resilience which we can use to our advantage, but we must pay attention to the lessons learnt.”
Backed by parent company Ficep SpA in Italy, Jones and his team have created several strong partnerships with complementary manufacturers, enabling them to offer a wide range of steel processing machinery to the UK market. In addition, the company’s extensive UK showroom facility can be used for customer training and product demonstrations, and houses a large spare-part facility to minimise downtimes for fabricators.
“We would have been celebrating our 20th anniversary at MACH, but the show has been postponed until January,” says Jones. “Despite this, I’m delighted to say that 2020 is set to be our busiest year yet for machinery orders, and we will be continuing to bring new and updated machines to market, to improve the productivity and processes of our steel processing clients.”
For further information www.ficep.co.uk

ITC cuts tooling costs for subcontractor

Founded by managing director Wayne Bouchier at the youthful age of 25, Letchworth-based Maztech Precision Engineering (MPE) today runs four Mazak machining centres, which include a VTC-530C, an i-500 and the jewel in the crown, an i-300 AWC five-axis, 32-pallet machine that runs unmanned around the clock.

However, the journey to acquiring high-end machine tools was certainly an uphill struggle, as the entrepreneur started the business with little more than loans, family support, some good faith from Mazak, a sprinkle of luck and truck loads of hard work and determination. Six years later, the combination of hard work, research and experience has been integrated with some innovative business nous that has seen Maztech invest in machine tools from Mazak, high-end CAM software from Open Mind and, of critical importance, high-quality cutting tools from Industrial Tooling Corporation (ITC).
Recalling the formation of the company and how the relationship with the Tamworth cutting-tool specialist transpired, Bouchier says: “During the early years of the business we relied largely upon one prominent tooling vendor, as well as a few smaller vendors. This combination gave us access to a range of products that would suit our initial needs. The primary supplier continually promised us a vending machine, which never materialised. Simultaneously, the price of tooling kept fluctuating. As a small subcontract manufacturer, we sometimes factor the cost of tooling into our work, so ever-changing prices were unacceptable. Instead of inviting every cutting tool sales rep to our site to conduct countless time-consuming trials, we asked 10 vendors to work with us on one single job.”

Applying this novel and efficient route to selecting the most appropriate tooling vendor, Maztech offered up an EN24 component for the MoD that was required in a volume of 300-off. Utilising one of its five-axis Mazak machining centres and CAM software from Open Mind, each steel cover component required over 10 minutes of continuous trochoidal roughing. So, Maztech asked the 10 invited vendors to supply a couple of their preferred five-flute solid carbide end mills to test. Each participating tool was run at identical speed and feed parameters that had been agreed with each of the 10 cutting-tool engineers from the various suppliers.
Bouchier says: “Every company claims to have the best cutting tools, so we put that theory and the confidence of the reps to the test. This was a genuine test of carbide quality and the performance of tool geometry. I ran every single tool until it broke and then recorded the data and tried the next tool – that was the fairest way of conducting the trials. The contrast in performance was staggering. We had one end mill that lasted just 30 seconds. However, most of the leading names in the industry machined five, six or seven parts, with some of the best performers reaching 10 finished parts before failure. The second-best tool managed to cut its way through 14 parts before failure, which we considered very good performance when measured against all the previously tried brands. However, the ITC tool was in a completely different league: the ITC Widia 577C five-flute solid-carbide end mill blew everything else out of the water.”
The ITC Widia 577C completed 25 parts before performance started to diminish. However, despite the deteriorating performance, the end mill would not break.
Following this testing process, Maztech introduced ITC Widia solid-carbide end mills to other components at its facility.
“Over 20% of our work is EN24 and another 20 to 30% is stainless steel, so we rapidly introduced ITC’s solid carbide tools to all our steel parts,” says Bouchier. “Based on the performance of the ITC Widia 577C, we felt confident that we could roll them out across our machine shop. I probably didn’t give ITC the ‘fairest of opportunities’ in the early days, but the 577C trial changed all that.

“The next step was to try the aluminium cutters and it has just grown from there,” he adds. “In the past couple of years we’ve implemented ITC’s deburring tools, thread rolling taps, ball-nosed end mills, through-coolant drills and much more. We only use solid-carbide tooling, and ITC now supplies 99% of our cutters. The remaining 1% will be tools that ITC do not manufacture. Our decision to work almost solely with ITC has been fully justified. We used to spend upward of £3000 per month on cutting tools, but ITC has helped us to half this cost. While a 50% cost reduction is great, what’s more impressive is that we’ve doubled the size of our business, our productivity and our output in the last two years since introducing ITC. So, in real terms, without ITC, our tooling costs would be four to five times higher than what they actually are today.”
One reason behind ITC now claiming 99% of the tooling supply at Maztech is the service.
“We machine 1000 steel blocks every six weeks for an aerospace customer and this job requires the rough machining of 2” cube sections,” says Bouchier. “We were using a long-series, five-flute 10 mm diameter solid-carbide end mill with a 42 mm flute length and chip breaker from our previous, unreliable supplier. At that point, ITC didn’t have a 42 mm flute tool with the dimensions we required, but they produced one for us. The performance of the ITC five-flute 10 mm diameter tool was comparable with that of the previous tool, so ITC revised it to extend tool life from 40 parts per tool, to 50.”
Looking to the future, Maztech is venturing into the realms of indexable cutting tools. Again, ITC has been on-hand to support the company.
“We’ve tried a few of the ITC indexable tools and had some good results, especially with the Widia VSM490,” states Bouchier. “We have been cutting stainless steel dry with a 50 mm diameter five-insert VSM490 face mill and that has been very good. We did a few trials from numerous suppliers and found that the Widia VSM490 face mill from ITC halved our tool spend on the inserts, and made an improvement to tool life. Basically, we were taking a 5 mm deep cut in stainless 304 and the ITC indexable reduced tooling costs by 15% and improved tool life by over 20%. This is a big saving on a job that is produced in batches of 150-off at least four times a year. The first-op machining time is 50 minutes per part using the VSM490 face mill, with a second op that requires another 40 minutes of machining, so ITC is again delivering huge benefits.”
For further information www.itc-ltd.co.uk

Behringer celebrates 100 years

Centenary celebrations have recently taken place at Behringer. 100 years ago, the business started when August Behringer founded a small locksmith and mechanical workshop in the village of Kirchardt, near Stuttgart, Germany. Production of the first sawing products, metal hacksaws, began in 1952, with the necessary cast iron made at its own iron foundry.

Since that time, Behringer sawing technology and the use of vibration-dampening cast iron components have been closely linked. The first bandsaw arrived in the 1970s, with a focus on robust, column-guided designs that prevails to this day. Behringer’s portfolio has since been bolstered by the addition of mitre saws and vertical bandsaws, while the integration of circular saw specialist, Eisele, in 2000, made it one of the few complete suppliers in the sawing technology market.
To celebrate the milestone, the company held a three-day party in its new production hall. ‘From a one-man business to the world´s leading provider of innovative sawing technology’ was the motto of the event, which doubled-up as an inauguration celebration of the company’s new 4000 sq m production facility.
The event was attended by customers and business partners from more than 30 nations, as well as employees from the whole Behringer Group and their families, alongside local residents of Kirchardt. With a varied programme of culinary delights, talks, live music and a fascinating show, Behringer was able to bring the anniversary motto ‘a story of people, pioneers and sawing machines’ to life.
For further information www.behringer.net

Tooling centre of excellence created

Lightweight engineering specialist Formaplex has strengthened its Design Engineering Services (DES) division with the creation of a ‘Tooling Centre of Excellence’.

The company’s specialist tooling teams and associated equipment are now together under one roof at its Portsmouth facility, where custom tools are assembled for customers, and where support is provided for other tooling needs. Creating such a facility will allow enhanced quality control, improved production processes and a lighter carbon footprint for the business, which supplies to manufacturers across multiple sectors.
For further information www.formaplex.com