BSA Tools, one of Britain’s most famous engineering brands, is reaching out to help locate its iconic machine tools believed ‘missing in action’ in all corners of the globe. The Birmingham-based business has launched an appeal to find the CNC and multi-spindle automatic lathes that have literally helped make the world go round over many decades.

Rescued from administration in 2017, the newly re-launched BSA Tools has created 15 jobs and tempted former employees to re-join the business and help a new generation of engineers. The company has the serial numbers of all machines in its archive and wants once again to service and maintain the equipment it knows best, both in the UK and overseas.

“These machines were built to last and we know many are still working out there, we just have to find them,” says Emily Eyles, business development manager for BSA Tools. “We’ve recently completed a rebuild on one machine that is 50 years old, and it’s now working as sweetly as it was on day one.

“What’s frustrating is that companies may be trying to make do with in-house servicing and repair,” she adds. “We have all of the equipment and serial numbers to help maintain these machines in pristine condition and keep them going for the next 50 years.”

An acronym of Birmingham Small Arms, the BSA name stretches back hundreds of years to the city’s ‘Gun Quarter’, which was recently immortalised on the small screen in the hit BBC drama Peaky Blinders.

BSA was also once the world’s biggest motorcycle manufacturer, owning brands including Triumph and Daimler.

For further information
www.bsa-tools.co.uk

Precision engineering firm KMF has invested in a significant piece of machinery that will double critical capacity. Resulting from an anticipated increase in demand post COVID-19, the group has purchased a second Yamazaki Mazak Quick Turn 250MSY to complement its suite of Mazak equipment. Adding to the facility’s capacity means KMF Group can further support its clients in the aerospace, instrumentation, scientific and medical industries.

Keith Nicholl, commercial director at KMF Group says: “The machine is co-located with an existing Quick Turn 250MSY, effectively doubling our capacity so we can respond to increased demands from new and existing customers. Both machines link to our offline programming capability, resulting in high levels of cutting efficiency, 24 hours a day, seven days per week.

“COVID-19 impacted many businesses, but as we emerge from the worst of the crisis, we’ve positioning ourselves to ensure that we’re fully prepared to support customers across various sectors with immediate effect,” he adds. “By investing now, and being business-ready, we can proactively support our customers with their own revival.”

The Quick Turn 250MSY has a 500 mm bed capacity, and is equipped with a 10” chuck on the main spindle and a 6” chuck on the secondary spindle, handling part sizes up to 380 mm. A Hydrafeed Multifeed magazine barfeed enables unmanned running of small-to-medium batch quantities.

Neil Coggins, area sales manager at Yamazaki Mazak UK, says: “As production begins to increase across multiple industries following the disruption caused by the pandemic, it’s vital that subcontractors have the engineering capacity to hit the ground running.”

For further information
www.kmf.co.uk

Solutions for the demanding production of transmission components: this statement sums up the task required of Kordel, headquartered in Dülmen near Münster. The company develops and produces complete transmission systems used in industrial trucks, as well as agricultural and construction machinery. To ensure that its technology can withstand tough, long-term continuous use, while at the same time ensuring efficient power transmission, the specialist manufacturer relies on high-quality, precision machine tools for its production.

For over 20 years, Kordel has been using pick-up technology from EMAG (the company currently operates 17 EMAG machines), and it continuously invests in new models from the German manufacturer. Most recently, the company purchased two VLC 200 GT turn-grind centres. These systems perform hard machining processes on a variety of bevel gears, one after the other, in a single set-up.

The result: by combining turning and grinding, this solution ensures long tool life and a qualitatively stable process.

One of the two machines is located at the Dernekamp site near its headquarters, while the other is in Jawor, Poland. In Germany, the VLC 200 GT manufactures a variety of different sized bevel gears, used in a one-wheel drive for industrial trucks. This gear is one of the central parts of the drive and requires an enormous amount of precision.

After hard turning, only a residual allowance of a few hundredths of a millimetre remains on the gear. The subsequent grinding of inner and outer contours – with the corresponding two grinding spindles inside the VLC 200 GT – creates a consistent surface quality that ensures a stable production process.

For further information
www.emag.com

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