PP Profiles (West Yorkshire) Ltd has bought a plasma and flame cutting machine from Kerf Developments that measures 39 m in length.

To get a scale of the workload at the Batley-based heavy engineering business, it is processing an average of 400 to 500 tonnes of steel every month, and almost 40% of this material is run through the new Kerf RUR4500. It is this reliance on the Kerf plasma and flame cutting machine that justified its acquisition. The level of investment at PP Profiles (West Yorkshire) Ltd now stands at more than £2m in the past two years.
The reason behind the investment in the colossal Kerf RUR4500 was due to two older 12 x 2.5 m flame cutting machines – and a 6 m plasma machine – proving unreliable, creating an inefficient workflow.
Commercial director Daniel Morley says: “We specified the Kerf RUR4500 with a single high definition 400 A plasma cutting head on a 12 x 4 m bed and a two-machine 24 x 4 m bed that consists of both a six-head and a four-head flame cutting gantry – all in a single 39 x 4 m cell. This allows us to load much larger jobs and has opened us up to new markets, as parts over 12 m long are not uncommon.”
The arrival of the Kerf RUR4500 machine made the previous two flame and one plasma machine surplus to requirements, reducing the required floor area and improving efficiency and workflow.
“Now, we have four people running the three machines within the Kerf RUR4500 cell,” says Morley. “This workflow configuration has reduced our processing times by at least 50%.”
For further information www.kerfdevelopments.com

Machining centre and lathe manufacturer Hurco Europe has reported its second-best annual turnover ever, only slightly below that of the company’s record year in 2018.

The announcement comes following Hurco Europe’s latest open house in December, which was attended by representatives from 53 manufacturers. Held at the company’s recently opened 26,000 sq ft headquarters, showroom and technical centre in High Wycombe, the open house attracted 88 visitors from the UK, Ireland and Sweden.
The event saw three orders placed for machining centres, including a double-column model. David Waghorn, managing director of Hurco Europe, says: “We were pleased to preview a cobot [collaborative robot] following our group’s purchase earlier this year of Pittsburgh manufacturer, ProCobot. It was automatically feeding one of our VMX30UHSi five-axis machining centres with aluminium billets from a table, and returning finish-machined components.”
For further information www.hurco.co.uk

A prominent cornerstone of the Okuma trade fair booth at the recent EMO 2019 exhibition was taken up by the company’s large MCR-S double-column machining centre. The machine is predestined for the die and mould industry as it combines high productivity, dimensional accuracy and high surface quality, reports Okuma.

With these properties, the MCR-S can rough, finish and fine-finish a workpiece in a single set up. The machine’s accuracy relies on a number of hardware and software technologies. One of these technologies is a swivel image sensor that measures the tool’s cutting edge. As a result, tool change related cutting edge offsets can be reduced to less than 10 µm.
According to Okuma, surface quality is achieved with the company’s intelligent ‘Hyper-Surface’ technology. By automatically detecting and correcting errors in the machining data, the application creates extremely smooth surfaces that are said to rarely need manual post-processing.
The high manufacturing quality has a positive impact on the machine’s productivity. Pablo Liechti, product manager, provides an example: “We have a customer who saved 38 hours in total when machining a large die mould with the MCR-S. They benefit from a shorter finishing cycle, fewer hours spent on polishing and little need for matching the press dies to their counterparts.”
For further information www.okuma.eu

As a specialist in producing one-off or low-volume development work, East Grinstead-based Classic Components is often called upon to turn work around at short notice, usually without any drawings.

As a long-term user of XYZ’s ProtoTRAK-controlled machine tools, their ease-of-use was familiar to managing director Malcolm Duffield, but the arrival of the latest RMX 3500 bed mill with new ProtoTRAK RMX control has been a revelation.
The advantages of the latest control on the RMX 3500 have helped Duffield achieve significant savings both in programming and cycle times.
“Moving from the old DPM control to the new RMX ProtoTRAK has been a step-change for me,” he says. “The time savings I’ve seen so far are thanks to innovations such as the adaptive material removal strategy and the ability to import DXF files.”
An example of the benefits of the DXF converter is in the production of sprockets for vintage aircraft. On his older machine, Duffield had to input every co-ordinate, which was time consuming both in terms of inputting and cross-checking the data. Now, it is simply a case of importing the DXF file and pressing cycle start.
“I’ve gone from what could have taken a couple of hours, down to a matter of minutes to start machining,” says Duffield.
One of the key new features of the RMX ProtoTRAK control for XYZ’s bed mills is adaptive material removal, which calculates the optimum tool path for the machining of pockets or ‘area clearance’. The savings can cut hours from cycle times, improve surface quality and improve tool life. For Classic Components, this feature has cut the cycle time on one particular part, a development of a toilet flush unit for an upmarket bathroom manufacturer, by 50%.
For further information www.xyzmachinetools.com

Coventry’s new water park, The Wave, is clad in an oval-shaped structure with blue shingles, a reference to flowing water.

The £36.7m park designed by architects FaulknerBrowns, features curved aesthetic panels achieved via the metal-bending expertise of Barnshaws. Barnshaws was approached by contractor Billington Structures to deliver approximately 120 curved RHS (rectangular hollow section) and PFC (parallel flanged channel) sections in various sizes within a timeframe of four weeks. Billington Structures selected Barnshaws due to its expertise in mandrel steel bending.
For further information www.barnshaws.com