William Mitchell seals Ford Q1 Award

A critical automotive supplier has secured one of the industry’s leading awards for quality and performance. William Mitchell, which is part of the Rical Group, has been recognised with the Ford Q1 award, marking the 20th year it has been supplying fine-blanked components to the carmaker’s plants in the UK, Germany, South Africa, Argentina, India, Turkey and the US.

The certification was presented to the management team and staff at the Black Country firm’s factory in Smethwick last week. It is only given to companies who demonstrate excellence beyond the ISO/TS standard in five key areas: capable systems, continuous improvement, on-time delivery and quality, superior manufacturing processes, and customer satisfaction.

For more information www.ricalgroup.com

Record growth for ANT Industries

ANT Industries, a precision engineering firm headquartered in Atherstone, Warwickshire, is celebrating a year of unprecedented success and growth by announcing new orders in excess of £30m for the next three years. The company machines components for aerospace and gas turbine engines that include engine rings, casings and prismatic parts for customers such as Eaton Aerospace, Rolls Royce and ITP.

Central to success at ANT Industries is its investment in cutting-edge machinery. Over the past 18 months the company has invested heavily in new CNC machines that include a Haas UMC 1000SS five-axis machining centre and an Anca FX5 Linear tool and cutter grinder. Additional investments will arrive in Q2 2024 through The Engineering Technology Group.

For more information www.antindustries.com

£3.25m investment drive at Brandauer

One of Birmingham’s most respected manufacturers has completed a £3.25m investment drive to celebrate a King’s Award for Enterprise achievement.Brandauer, which employs 64 people, has commissioned its fifth high-speed Yamada press that will help it deliver quick-changeover subcontract stamping capabilities. The installation follows the purchase of a state-of-the-art laser micro-cutting machine, a purchase that was made possible by a 40% grant from the ‘Aerospace Up’ programme, giving the business this technology for the first time.Brandauer is promising to deliver up to £6m of sales over the next two years.

For further information www.brandauer.co.uk

Bumotec solves medical production puzzle

Ireland-based Dawnlough Precision is a 110-employee subcontract manufacturing business that has travelled a relentless journey of growth since it started manufacturing tooling for the aerospace and medical industries back at the start of the millennium. This ascension has arrived through an aggressive growth strategy and investment in high-end machine tools, including two Bumotec 191neo turn-mill centres from Starrag.

“Our core business in the medical sector predominantly focused on vascular work and, from this, we’ve expanded our offering,” explains Keith Kennedy, aerospace production manager. “We now produce an array of components for our robotic-assisted surgical [RAS]customers, as well as consumable instruments.

It is here that the search for a suitable machine led Dawnlough to purchase its first Bumotec 191neo FTL-R in June 2022.

“We needed a machine that could offer accuracy of 2-3µm on production runs, short cycle times and incredible efficiency because it’s a very competitive market,” continues Kennedy. “We visited many companies offering high-accuracy machines, but it’s only as you look closer and purchase a machine for this type of work that you really see the added value they bring.

“Some of the functions of the Bumotec, such as thesoftware for monitoring the machine, the cutting load, the contact cutting time and the large 90-tool ATC are incredible.It was a huge investment and an unknown risk, but the Bumotec ticked all of our boxes.”

Following the success of the Bumotec 191neo in FTL-R configuration, the Galway company added a second Bumotec 191neo in March 2023. Supplied in FTL-PRM configuration, the subsequent Bumotec 191neo features complete automation and a 20-position pallet station for lights-out production.

For further information www.starrag.com

Rapid set-ups decide Cincom purchase

Last autumn, motorsport subcontractor h2m needed to replace an ageing sliding-head CNC turn-mill centre at its Hinckley factory. Joint managing directors and owners, father and son team Andy and Martin Forryan, considered buying a replacement from the supplier of the original twin-spindle, 32 mm capacity slider, but insteadopted for a Cincom M32-VIIILFV from Citizen Machinery UK.

Around 3000-off is a large run for sliding-head turned parts at h2m, while the production of batches of relatively simple components up to 500-off is typical for unattended overnight running. However, the company completestrickier jobs during day shifts in batch sizes as low as 10-off, so speed of programming is essential to minimise machine downtime.

Andy and Martin paid particular attention to this issue, concluding that the Cincom lathe with Citizen’s Alkart Wizard programming system would be less expensive and several times faster than if purchasing the other lathe. The wizard assists and simplifies the creation of even complex cycles using a built-in code library, reference material and diagrams.

Sharing some detail of their deliberations, Martin says: “Alkart Wizard is an inexpensive option. We use it to prepare programs and prove them offline for virtually every sliding-head part we produce. We only program the occasional simple component directly at the control.

“Even complicated components take just 30-40 minutes to program in Alkart with only a further 15-20 minutes to check the cycle virtually in the wizard.So a new job is always up and running in under an hour.”

He contrasts this with the much longer and more expensive route that would have been needed with the other slider, for which a similar wizard was not available.

For further information www.citizenmachinery.co.uk