The huge growth in fish farming in recent years is proving good news for a small precision engineering company based near Spalding.

A one-off job 10½ years ago has turned into a major stream of business for Channing Engineering, which employs eight people at its workshop in the village of Pinchbeck.
Run by Colin Channing, the company makes parts that are in high demand for fish farming businesses in Norway, the Faroe Islands and Canada. As a result, more than half of its work is now exported and, unlike many, the firm has no worries about the implications of Brexit with all of its main sales destinations outside the EU.
With business continuing to grow due to its reputation for quality and reliability, Channing and his team have decided to replace one of the company’s Bridgeport machining centres, working with the Engineering Technology Group (ETG) to purchase a new Hardinge GX710S.
“The previous machine was a highly reliable piece of kit, so it made sense to get another Bridgeport,” points out Channing. “It’s been a while since we’ve had to replace a piece of equipment and it was the first time we had worked with ETG. Everything went very smoothly and, when any issues did crop up, we received a rapid response, which is just what you want with a significant investment.”
The Bridgeport Hardinge GX710S is a three-axis vertical machining centre with 20 tools on an ATC carousel and a single spindle speed of up to 12,000 rpm. Table size is 800 x 400 mm, while travels in the X, Y and Z axes are 710, 400 and 430 mm respectively.
For further information www.engtechgroup.com

Having doubled the size of its premises in 2016 and the same year purchased its first five-axis machining centre, a Hurco VMX42SRTi with swivelling B-axis spindle, subcontractor Almond Engineering has installed a second, similar model.

Managing director Chris Smith favours this style of five-axis machining centre over the trunnion-mounted rotary table arrangement due to its versatility for tackling a greater variety of work, including the four-axis machining of large components.
Last year saw the arrival of a Hurco VMX30i, purchased with a fourth-axis rotary table to speed set-ups, increase production efficiency and reduce delivery times, plus a larger three-axis VMX60i with 1525 x 660 x 610 mm working volume that significantly extends the size of component that can be machined at the Livingston site.
Overall spend in 2018 exceeded £400,000, and half that figure is due to be spent again this year, including on new software. Driving this level of investment was 25% growth in 2016/17, a further increase in turnover the following year and a predicted 19% rise this financial year. It is a pace that Smith describes as “almost too fast” in view of the perennial difficulty in hiring skilled staff.
Much of the growth has come from winning new business from the medical sector in Scotland, such as the assembly of lines for producing contact lenses and the machining of parts for operating theatre equipment. The industry now accounts for 8% of the company’s revenue by value.
Semiconductor firms across the central belt of Scotland are the other main sector serviced, while contracts are also received from the ever resilient aerospace and defence industries. A hallmark of the subcontractor’s service is significant design input into the mechanical engineering aspects of the contracts it undertakes.
For further information www.hurco.com/en-gb

Mills CNC has recently supplied Dyer Engineering, a precision manufacturer located in the northeast of England, with five Doosan machine tools.

The machines – three Doosan DNM 4500 vertical machining centres, one Doosan DNM 6700 large-capacity vertical machining centre and one Lynx 2100LMB lathe equipped with driven tooling and supplied with a barfeed – have been installed at Dyer Engineering’s 100,000 ft2 split-site manufacturing facility in Stanley, County Durham.
All five machines were selected for their reliability, productivity, cutting performance, competitive price, ready availability, and the service and aftersales support provided by Mills CNC. The decision to make such a significant investment in capital equipment followed an internal audit undertaken by Dyer Engineering. It was intended that the audit would identify any weaknesses or potential production ‘pinch points’ that could affect the company’s ability to meet its future growth objectives and ambitions.
Says Leigh Foulger, BatchLine Division lead: “We are committed to continuous improvement and, as such, continually monitor and benchmark all aspects of our performance. The audit results revealed that some of our existing CNC machine tools, while still performing adequately were, owing to their age, becoming less reliable and more prone to breakdown. We knew that the situation, if not addressed, would only become more acute over time and so we decided to ‘grasp the nettle’ and make the significant investment required to address our weaknesses and improve our machining capabilities in one fell swoop.”
Although Dyer Engineering does not necessarily push its machines to deliver exacting part accuracies (typical tolerances required are ±0.2 mm), they can be in operation around the clock and, as such, have to be reliable performers in order to meet OTIF arrangements made with customers.
For further information www.millscnc.co.uk

Bolton-based Silcoms supplies the aerospace industry with nickel alloy, titanium, stainless steel and aluminium engine ring components and assemblies, including seals, shrouds, segments and casings.

The company was awarded an additional contract in 2018 to supply a complex rotating fan seal for a large civil aircraft engine programme, which prompted the need for additional capacity. Managing director Jim Hill took the opportunity to develop a new process route that would speed production of the rotational titanium parts, while maintaining the tight tolerances needed.
The new method of manufacture now hinges on the use of a Hermle C50 UMT five-axis machining centre fitted with a torque table for carrying out in-cycle turning operations. Supplied by Kingsbury, the machine performs three operations in two set-ups that previously required five operations on three different machines. As a result, floor-to-floor time has been reduced, while fewer set-ups mean that the risk of accumulative tolerance error is minimal.
Produced from a titanium forging, the 1015 mm diameter fan seal has to be turned to a final wall thickness of 3 mm. Here, it is crucial to control dimensional accuracy and avoid distortion. After a number of preparatory machining stages, the Hermle five-axis machining centre completes the next five operations in two set-ups over 20 hours. Semi-finish and finish turning have been compressed into one operation on each side. During the second clamping on the Hermle, turned and milled features are completed. Critical dimensional features are held to ±20 µm over the full diameter of the part.
Says Hill: “Consolidating turning and milling on one machine has significant benefits. Apart from a reduction in component handling and an improvement in accuracy, it cuts the lead-time for converting a titanium forging into a finished seal, and reduces the total number of tools we need.”
For further information www.kingsburyuk.com

Arrowsmith Engineering of Coventry is capitalising on 20% growth over the past 12 months by investing over £200,000 in a Doosan four-axis machining centre and robotic cell. It is hope the move will boost production speed and increase capacity by 50%.

The company is using lights-out manufacturing to run a precision aero-engine part 24 hours a day, seven days a week, supplying more than 200 components every month to customers based in Spain and the US. Integrating robots into the process has removed the need for a second machining centre.
Managing director Jason Aldridge says: “I’m a big fan of automation and don’t’ sign up to the notion that it’s taking jobs; if anything it will make us more competitive so we can take on additional people. The Doosan CNC machining centre and collaborative robot system is our first investment in robotics, and has been configured to suit our specific requirements for 24-hour manufacturing on a complex component for the aerospace sector. It has removed the need for an operator to load and unload the parts, and this person has gone on to a different production process that is more skilled. This is just the start of what we are sure will be a continuous investment drive in robots.
“It’s made us 15% quicker and given us a 50% capacity boost; that’s some payback already,” he continues. “Automation shouldn’t be seen as something that only the big boys do; SMEs can access it cost-effectively and we need to ‘grasp the nettle’ in order to bring the UK’s productivity in line with our international competitors.”
For further information https://engtechgroup.com/