NSR Engineering, a Bristol-based subcontractor specialising in turned and milled components, is celebrating 20 years of success through its partnership with sliding-head lathe supplier Star Micronics GB.

Buying its first Star lathe in 2000, the immediate advantages of incorporating sliding-head technology enabled NSR to quickly expand its machining portfolio just 18 months later. With the additional two Star machines it acquired, the company’s expanding order book soon led it to outgrow its workshop. In response, NSR purchased its own dedicated 5000 sq ft facility in 2002 and transferred its full capacity of three Star lathes and 14 cam auto machines.

With work for its sliding-head section increasing in demand, and each machine already in production around the clock, the company structured a continuous improvement programme which would see each of its cam auto machines systematically upgraded to Star sliding-head lathes. Furthermore, NSR became the very first company to take delivery of a Star SR-20RIII following its launch in 2007.

Fast forward to today, NSR has a total of nine modern Star lathes running 24 hours a day, offering over 1500 hours of machining potential per week.

Company owner John Duerden says: “The performance and reliability of the machines often allows us to compete with prices abroad, and the short set-up time between jobs gives us truly dynamic production capabilities to suit the demands of our customers. As our components come off the machines complete, running the Stars lights-out means that each morning we are presented with nine bins full of parts.”

The company’s most recent investment is an SR-20JII Type B: this latest addition to Star’s 20 mm SR range offers enhanced power on the spindles and live tools, more tooling positions, increased rigidity and the latest Fanuc control.

For further information
www.stargb.com

Mills CNC, the exclusive distributor of Doosan machine tools in the UK and Ireland, has entered into a collaborative research partnership with Irish Manufacturing Research (IMR), an independent, not-for-profit research and training organisation (RTO) based in Mullingar, County Westmeath. To support the organisation’s research programme in the Irish market, Mills supplied IMR with a new Doosan Puma 2600SY II lathe in August 2020.

The 10“ chuck box-guideway multi-tasking lathe features a 22 kW/4000 rpm spindle, a Y axis (±52.5 mm), a sub-spindle (15 kW/6000 rpm) and driven tooling capabilities (7.5 kW/5000 rpm). Furthermore, the model supplied to IMR featured a number of ancillary technology additions to increase its productivity and efficiency, including: a Hydrafeed servo-driven bar feeder; Filtermist oil/mist extraction unit; Renishaw optical workpiece inspection probe; LNS swarf conveyor system; FSE filtration system; and Hainbuch collet chucks.

The lathe also features an automatic door and a robot interface to facilitate automated workpiece loading/unloading in the future.

Although the Puma was only installed a few weeks ago it has already been involved in a number of customer-led projects. One of these involved exploiting the lathe’s multi-tasking capabilities – using the Puma lathe’s Y-axis, mill-drill and capabilities to significantly reduce the number of machining operations, cut cycle times and conduct in-process inspection to improve part quality.

The project has demonstrated that the Puma lathe’s on-board technologies (including its thermal compensation capabilities) can significantly reduce component processing times – from five down to just one operation – and increase part accuracies.

For further information
www.millscnc.co.uk

For more than 70 years, the core competence of Gloor Brothers, an owner-managed family business based in Burgdorf, Switzerland has been the regulation of pressure and flow of technical gases. When the business earned its EN ISO: 13485 certification in 1994, this core competence was extended to medical technology.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for fittings in therapeutic oxygen delivery devices has risen sharply, resulting in a capacity bottleneck in the turning department at Gloor. Thanks to a long-standing collaboration between Gloor Medical and Tornos, both companies were able to react quickly and make valuable life-saving contributions.

In the 1990s, the management team at Gloor decided to purchase its first Tornos CNC machine, which is still in operation today for special fittings. Over time, five more Tornos single-spindle sliding-head lathes were added. These CNC machines play a major role in ensuring the manufacture of brass parts to the required quality.
Andreas Weyermann, head of manufacturing at Gloor

Brothers, is delighted with the recent arrival of a brand new Tornos EvoDECO 32, which was chosen for its precision and capabilities: “Our employees are trained at the Tornos Academy in Moutier. When they return from their courses, they have mastered the machine and its programs and can reach their full potential,” he says.

The Tornos machines run at full speed day and night.
“We still work in one shift, but the machines have a certain autonomy and run unattended for several hours overnight in the so-called ghost shift,” confirms Weyermann.

For further information
www.tornos.com