Landmark project

Engineering specialist Sheffield Forgemasters is to lead a consortium of partners in its largest ever research and development project, with an overall project value of £10.5m.

The company will explore the industrialisation of electron beam welding in civil nuclear assemblies, with the potential to integrate welding into the manufacturing process, offering material improvements and reductions in production time and cost. Sheffield Forgemasters has been awarded £8m of BEIS funding to lead strategic partners in the project.
For further information www.sheffieldforgemasters.com

Latest Jetcam Expert and OC released

Newly created versions of Expert and Orders Controller software from Jetcam International have been released containing a variety of added features and enhancements.

Jetcam’s Expert v20.31.00 benefits from several global interface enhancements, including a newly created screen macro recording feature that allows users to assign menu options or keyboard shortcuts to strings of commands, reducing the time to perform common functions. Furthermore, unlimited undo/redo commands allows the user to step back through multiple actions if required, while logic improvements across the board in areas such as fly cutting and common cutting can further reduce CNC cycle times.
JOC (Jetcam Orders Controller) 3.37 includes enhanced static nest ordering, allowing users to select one or more nests and see if they can be used to fulfil parts in the orders list. Users can then modify the number of runs of each nest in order to discover the optimum quantity required to fulfil the orders list. JOC can also create image thumbnails of components during CAD import, which can then be used by third-party systems, such as MRP, to show an image against a component.
For assisting customers where network stability and performance are sub-optimal, JOC now makes multiple attempts to ready component data, ensuring that temporary network glitches will not impact on processes.
“These releases focus on user experience, with features such as screen macro recording in Jetcam Expert and static nest ordering in JOC allowing users to perform tasks much quicker than before,” says Martin Bailey, general manager. “We’ve also made significant ‘under the bonnet’ enhancements to many of our automation technologies, so not only do they take less time to run, they also deliver improvements in CNC machine and material efficiency on the shop floor.”
For further information www.jetcam.com

Auctim powered by Moyersoen

Moyersoen, a Belgian auction house with decades of experience in both regular and online auctions, will lift its offer and service package to a higher international level from 2020 onwards.

The company will do this under the name Auctim. Since 2007, the auction software that Moyersoen has relied on for years has evolved to become a major global platform. In 2019, Moyersoen and partners started organising online auctions in Germany, France, Netherlands and the Czech Republic.
To reinforce this internationalisation, Moyersoen has opted for the new, more accessible name ‘Auctim’, and opens its software to partners worldwide. Professional sellers and auction houses on an international level can now offer their auctions on one central website – the Moyersoen website – which was renamed Auctim on 6 January 2020.
For further information www.auctim.com

Rail demand drives investment at Ferrabyrne

Ferrabyrne is a specialist moulding company predominantly producing bonded rubber for metal technology and suspension systems used in the rail industry and commercial vehicles. The Littlehampton-based business manufactures as much as possible in-house, including the design and production of mould tools. Recent growth in demand from its rail customers, driven by refurbishment of existing roiling stock to extend its service life and new projects, meant that the company’s tool room had to meet unprecedented production challenges. This saw a need for improved and increased machining capacity.

“The rail market is very active at present, which has led to unprecedented demand for our products,” explains Mike Wood, Ferrabyrne’s project director. “Customers such as Hitachi, Siemens, Bombardier, CAF and Stadler are very active in the UK and Europe. The development of new rolling stock has led to an increased number of new vehicles that our customers are bringing to market, and it is a privilege to working with them. We have invested heavily in rapid prototyping to ease pressure at the design stage, but our tool room was faced with major production challenges. We would typically produce one mould tool every 2 to 3 weeks, but at present we have a waiting list of over 40 mould tools, with a similar number of assembly tools. Additional tool room machining capacity was clearly a priority, hence the need for investment.”
As products have developed in size and complexity, demands on the mould tools have also increased, and the need for a machine capable of meeting these challenges has led Ferrabyrne to XYZ Machine Tools and its XYZ 2010 vertical machining centre.
Part of XYZ’s HD (heavy-duty) range, the 2010 VMC is a box-slideway based machine built on solid Meehanite castings, with the machine weighing in at 20,000 kg. One feature that attracted Ferrabyrne to this machine was its 1,000 mm of Y-axis travel, which is supported on six hardened box ways.

“As our work was increasing in size, we were finding that we were having to shuffle work around on our existing machines in order to fully manufacture them,” says Phil Nell, Ferrabyrne’s tooling design engineer. “So, having the large Y axis was an important part in our decision making and, although we did our research, the XYZ was the only machine of this type that could give us that. Our requirements also included a need to quickly set-up jobs for one-off and low-volume production, and the XYZ gives us that ability, in combination with our WorkNC and Autodesk software, which help create complex tool paths quickly for download to the Siemens control.”
Prior to placing the order for the XYZ 2010 HD VMC, the team from Ferrabyrne visited an XYZ showroom for a demonstration and, while there, attention was drawn to the ProtoTRAK lathe, in particular the new ProTURN RLX 425 with a 1.25 m bed length. This machine features the latest RX ProtoTRAK control.
“I used ProtoTRAK when it was first introduced, and we have an XYZ SLV turret mill in the tool room with one of the older EMX controls, so I was interested to see the new control and I have to say it’s brilliant,” says Nell.
The impact that the new control had on Nell and his colleagues saw them go away and produce a justification for the purchase of the RLX 425 that included the elimination of an existing CNC lathe.
“The benefits of the RLX 425 have fully justified our commitment to purchase it,” says Nell. “We did have some resistance from people who were used to the old machine, but the simplicity and ease-of-use of the ProtoTRAK control quickly won them over. Our efficiency producing low-volume parts has improved, as we can load DXF files for more complex jobs to the control, but still program many jobs at the machine and quickly be in production. However, the thing that mostly won us over was the TRAKing facility, whereby we can verify programs before pressing cycle start. This gives a lot of confidence to the operators; it is a perfect machine for our tool room work.”

XYZ’s ProTURN RLX 425 sits in the middle of the company’s ProTURN lathe range and is available with either a 1.25 or 2 m distance between centres. Performance is enhanced by a 7.5 kW spindle with three speed ranges covering 25 to 2500 rpm. In addition to the TRAKing facility, the ProtoTRAK control delivers constant surface speed, a touchscreen interface with the now familiar ‘pinch to zoom’ and ‘twist to rotate graphics’, a tool library, and on-screen speed and feed override. These features are among many enhancements that lead to smoother workflow and greater productivity, yet retain the familiar ease-of-use to which ProtoTRAK users have become accustomed, making the step up from older versions straightforward.
For further information www.xyzmachinetools.com

Honorary degree

One of the West Midlands’ leading female industrialists has been awarded an honorary degree by Coventry University.

Carol Burke CBE, managing director at Unipart Manufacturing Group, was granted the title of ‘Doctor of Technology’ in recognition of her pioneering work in setting up the Institute of Advanced Manufacturing & Engineering (AME) over five years ago. The experienced engineer was one of the driving forces behind the UK’s first ‘Faculty on the Factory Floor’, helping support a new approach to developing the graduates of the future by making them more industry-ready.
For further information www.ame.co.uk