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

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

Coventry-based Adams Lubetech is a manufacturer of single-point and centralised lubrication equipment for OEMs in the food, compressor and conveyor sectors, and across industry in general. Consistently rising sales worldwide meant the company needed extra production capacity. So in early 2020 Adams Lubetech purchased its first lathe from Citizen Machinery, a fixed-head Miyano BNJ-51 turn-mill centre, to produce not only rotational parts, but components produced previously on a manual mill or a power press.

Eric Chambers, factory manager, says: “With these parts in mind, we wanted a powerful, rigid turning centre that was equally capable of milling. We selected the Miyano bar automatic primarily due to its competitive price. The first purely prismatic component we produced on it was an anchor block for our sister company in Belgium. We were milling and drilling the steel blocks manually in several operations, which was time-consuming, so we decided to use the Miyano as a chucking lathe to produce them automatically.”

The lathe effectively doubles as a CNC machining centre in this application. Each part, which has large threaded holes and smaller diameter holes machined into multiple faces, comes off the machine complete in a cycle time of 139 seconds.

The Miyano is also taking work from a power press at the Coventry factory, resulting in even greater advantages. A deep-drawn part previously required seven sequential operations, removal for skimming on a capstan lathe and return to the press for slotting. Lead-time was more than one month to produce a typical batch of 8000 and there was a lot of manual intervention for inter-machine handling. The same part is now produced in one hit from bar on the twin-spindle Miyano in 2.5 minutes, so the entire batch can be finished and shipped in a fortnight if the job is left to run around the clock, seven days a week.

For further information
www.citizenmachinery.co.uk