Bow-top or hoop-top railings, are an increasingly popular solution for marking property boundaries and dividing open spaces. Proving highly popular for schools, parks and light commercial properties, they are an aesthetically pleasing solution, while their tubular construction ensures a strong and secure fence. Fabricators across the country pride themselves on bow top railing manufacturing, however the bow top itself can be a stumbling block.

Selmach Machinery says an increasing number of customers have been enquiring about solutions for bringing the manufacture of bow-top railings in-house. Many have previously been buying in the bow-top part of the railing and fabricating together the rest of the fencing. By bringing production in-house it enables manufacturers to have a greater control on the whole process, saving costs and negating supply chain issues.

The process is straightforward in principle, taking tubular steel, bending it through 180° and repeating. But what is the most effective production method? According to Selmach, the Curvassi range of bending machines achieve fast and accurate bending in round and square tube, flat bar, round bar, and square bar. Suitable for producing bow-top fencing hoops, the machine are available with either a manual or fully hydraulic vice. These bow-top fencing bending machines are suited to production environments as a 180° bend take just four seconds to complete.

Assorted tooling allows users to handle either solid or hollow tubes for forming into bow tops. These solution costs from £7000 to £12,000 + VAT.
For further information www.selmach.com

A new subcontract manufacturing start-up is aiming to help plug the UK’s five-axis capacity shortage with a machine manufactured by one of his former employers. Jonathan Butler has set up Butler Precision Engineering, based near Dudley in the West Midlands, with the help of a Mazak VariAxis C-600 five-axis machining centre.

“It’s been a longstanding ambition to run my own precision machining company and there has never been a better time to make the plunge,” he says. “There’s a real gap in the market for five-axis capability due to limited machining capacity in the UK, which leads to too much work chasing too few available machining hours. My hope is that Butler Precision Engineering and the VariAxis can help plug the gap.”

After being operational for only a few weeks, Butler Engineering has already secured two contracts for turbine blade work and medical equipment.

“We’re getting a lot of interest, particularly from customers who want to use us as a development shop or for prototype work, which is perfect for the VariAxis,” he says.

Butler has 30 years’ experience in engineering, including time with Renault F1 as a machinist and programmer, as a machine shop manager for a fabrication company, and most recently as an engineering consultant for Quickgrind. During his time with Mazak, he learned all about the VariAxis i-600 machine, the forerunner to the C-600, as an application engineer.

He says: “It was my job to know the VariAxis like the back of my hand, so when I decided to take the plunge and set up my own business there was only going to be one machine that I wanted. You’ve got to know and trust the technology you’re working with.”
For further information www.mazakeu.co.uk

When an ageing horizontal boring centre was on its last legs and the world was entering the pandemic, Rockingham Manufacturing found a suitable cure with a Quaser horizontal machining centre from the Engineering Technology Group (ETG).

Founded in 2004 out of the ashes of a previously failed business, Rockingham Manufacturing is a subcontract manufacturer that supports a diverse client base in the food machinery, diesel engine, earthmoving, factory spares and general manufacturing sectors. To cater for its diverse customer base, managing director Martin Scott believes it is imperative to have a horizontal borer or HMC to complement its four VMCs. So, when the Corby-based subcontractor found its horizontal boring machine unreliable and in need of replacing, the company turned to ETG and its Quaser HX504BPF twin-pallet HMC.

“The Quaser has a similar weight to its predecessor, but in a footprint that is 20% smaller. Despite the smaller footprint, the XYZ axis travel of 762 x 640 x 800 mm is considerably larger than the previous machine. Combining this larger work envelope with high-precision indexing of the B axis, we’ve reduced secondary operations as the Quaser can complete more jobs in one hit.”

He adds: “The Z and Y axes are much larger than the previous machine, and this allows us to machine bigger parts. However, it’s not just about large axis travels, but having the stability to machine larger components. For example, we wanted to U-drill some holes at 50 mm diameter in steel with the holes positioned beyond 500 mm high on the Z axis. The rigidity of the Quaser ensured this was no problem for us.”
For further information www.engtechgroup.com

Robotic component loading and unloading is helping prismatic components subcontractor Hemlock Engineering of Stapleford to unleash the true productivity potential of its latest Brother five-axis, 30-taper Speedio M200X3 vertical machining centre. The result has been a 500% increase in production output compared with manually-loaded machines on-site.

The remarkable aspect of this automation success story is that it has been achieved in the most problematic of scenarios: the production of relatively small batches of components between 1000 and 2000-off requiring short cutting cycles of between two and 10 minutes.

Hemlock’s owner Paul Cobb says: “Typically, one of our 40-taper VMCs runs for 40 hours per week. However, a lot of the time the relatively slow spindle is not cutting – I estimate we get on average 45% utilisation. With the robotic Feedio load/unload system serving the latest Brother, we achieve 100 hours of operation per week, sometimes more, and the uptime of the faster 30-taper spindle is 88%.

“On this basis, overall production output is about five times that of one of our 40-taper machines,” he continues. “Additionally, the latter capacity needs the full-time attendance of an operator whereas the Brother cell occupies an operator for only about 20% of their time. So there is a five-fold reduction in the labour cost content of components produced.”

He explained that the plug-and-play Speedio/Feedio cell costs about £800 per week to run, including finance, labour and power, which he said “is not very much”. It arrived on the shop floor in March 2022 and, as already observed, produces similar output to five 40-taper machines with full-time operators. That is why Cobb describes the benefits of his first ever automated prismatic component production cell as “absolutely astronomical” and “off the charts”.
For further information www.wmtcnc.com