Contract machining specialist Unicut Precision Engineering of Welwyn Garden City reportsan increase in annual turnover from £3m in 2016 to £8m currently, underpinned by investment of £1.7m in new production and inspection equipment over the past two years.
Around half of this investment went on two more Cincom sliding-head lathes and two additional Miyano fixed-head lathes from Citizen Machinery UK, bringing the totals of the bar-fed lathes on site to 24 and 11 respectively. The remaining funds supported the purchase of three new items of inspection equipment and an extension to the automatic pallet storage and retrieval system, linking three five-axis machining centres on site.

Regarding turning, which currently accounts for 85% of Unicut’s turnover, Jason Nicholson, owner and managing director, says that standardisation on Citizen lathes with their user-friendly, intuitive Mitsubishi controls greatly helps to mitigate the current shortage of skilled setter-operators. Use of this CNC system throughout the factory also speeds the training of staff and allows operators to swap easily between machines.

Programs are normally prepared offline with Esprit CADCAM and via Citizen Machinery’s own Alkart CNC Wizard programming aid. The latter guides operators through creation of part programs with the help of a built-in code library for machining processes, reducing the amount of time spent typing in G and M codes and consulting manuals or other programs.

Unicut’s latest turning centre additions are two 65 mm bar capacity Miyano BNE-65MYY models, each featuring a pair of Y-axis turrets and the latest Mitsubishi 15-inch touchscreen control. These machines joined five smaller fixed-head lathes in the same series to form a seven-machine cell for producing hydraulic and pneumatic components in volumes up to 10,000-off.
For further information www.citizenmachinery.co.uk