UK NEWS

Students complete sustainability challenge

Six students gave up time in their summer holidays to take part in an engineering sustainability challenge that has inspired them to pursue future employment opportunities. The aspiring engineers, all from Cumbria and either at college or having just sat GCSEs, spent eight days on a project looking at ways of reducing carbon emissions at Sellafield Ltd’s Engineering Centre of Excellence at Cleator Moor.The Summer Sprint project was the first of its kind and was set-up by Lorna Devine, Sellafield’s engineering development solutions lead, in collaboration with Lakes College and the Centre for Leadership Performance.
For further information www.bit.ly/3L3Tgyz

International award for Renishaw co-founder

Sir David McMurtry, co-founder and executive chairman of Renishaw, is the recipient of the I-Form Advanced Manufacturing Excellence Award 2023. The award, presented at the 72nd CIRP General Assembly hosted at University College Dublin, Ireland, recognises McMurtry’s outstanding contribution to innovation and research in advanced manufacturing over many decades. This year marks 50 years since McMurtry and John Deer founded Renishaw, which is a specialist in a range of engineering fields, including dimensional metrology and metal additive manufacturing (AM).
For further information www.renishaw.com

XYZ streamlines medical device development

ATL Technology in Cardiff is a specialist manufacturer of medical devices, particularly energy-driven instruments used in minimally invasive surgery. These devices use low-voltage, high-current RF energy waveforms to seal, coagulate, dissect, vaporise, resect or mobilise tissue. ATL utilises two tool rooms to produce prototypes, tooling, jigs, fixtures, special in-house machinery for assembly and disassembly, and spare parts.

The R&D toolroom initially adopted an XYZ SMX 2500 bed millin 1997. Over time, the company expanded its capabilities with the addition of a 660 HD vertical machining centre, a 1340 lathe and an XYZ 500 LR vertical machining centre featuring linear rail technology.

Meanwhile, the maintenance tool room utilises an RLX 1630 lathe, an XYZ 1500 manual turret mill and an XYZ RMX 2-OP, which machines light alloy and plastic parts from stock materials. The recent acquisition of an XYZ 500 TMC in March 2023 further highlights ATL Technology’s long-standing investment in XYZ machines.

Process development engineer Stephen Greensays: “The XYZ 500 TMC has a larger working area that enables us to machine bigger mould tools, jigs and fixtures in-house. It has more power, a 12,000 rpm spindle that is ideal for small tools, and through-tool coolant. This capability makes it easy to machine tool steels for injection moulds and electrodes for die sinking. It is also good at deep-hole drilling, delivering faster material removal rates. Withsubcontracting, it took many weeks to deliver a tool. Now we can produce an entire tool within a week, or a single part to repair a production line breakdown within 24 hours.”

Tool-room technician Ashley Gardiner adds: “90% of our work is one-off, small batches or spares, so the 12 tool pockets on the 500 TMC are sufficient for most of our needs.”
For further information www.xyzmachinetools.com

Machining centre choice made pure and simple

Mills CNC has supplied Pure Innovate Manufacturing, a project management and engineering solutions provider, with a new high-performance machining centre.The machine, a DN Solutions DNM 5700 is now in-situat the company’s new and spacious ‘Innovation’ facility in Wallingford, just a few days after relocating its operations there. It is the first machine tool acquired by the company in its four-year history.

The DNM 5700 acquired by Pure Innovate is a three-axis vertical machining centre equipped with FANUC iPlus control and 15” touchscreen iHMI. Further features include an 18.5kW/12,000rpm directly-coupled spindle, 30-position ATC, large worktable and fast rapids. Mills CNC supplied the machine with through-spindle-coolant capability and a Renishaw tool and workpiece probing system to increase machining flexibility and improve process efficiencies.

Pure Innovate is the brainchild of managing director, Carl Joy, who says: “Having our own dedicated machining resource at the Innovation facility improves our flexibility and responsiveness.We’re can produce prototypes [including any iterations] quickly and efficiently – and means we’re not only able to deliver high-quality, fast turnaround machined prototypes, but also the processes developed and used to machine them.”

He continues: “To increase the scope and scale of our Innovation facility in the future, we are actively looking at investing in new technologies, like simultaneous five-axis machines, and developing our in-house capabilities further through processes such as additive manufacturing and composite machining.Nothing is off the table.”

Joy took the decision to invest in a DN Solutions DNM 5700 for a number of reasons.

“Pound for pound, the DNM 5700 is the ideal machine for us,” he states. “The machine is fast, flexible and accurate. It will enable us to machine high-precision prototypes and pre-production parts quickly.”
For further information www.millscnc.co.uk

Major upgrade to large 30-taper machine

Brother, the Japanese 30-taper machining centre manufacturer, has had a machine in its portfolio with a 1 m Xaxis for nearly a decade. The third iteration of this model sees the specification uprated in several key areas to boost capacity and versatility. Sole sales and service agent in Britain and Ireland is Whitehouse Machine Tools.

Now called Speedio W1000Xd2, the machine is the largest on the market in the 30-taper category. The extension of Z axis travel from 300 to 380 mm, together with a new option of a 250 mm column extension, means that users may place a much larger component under the spindle. If rotated in a trunnion, the swing diameter increases to 540 mm, and if fixtured directly on the table, maximum weight is 500 kg.

A benefit of having 1000 mm travel in the X axis is that users can machine either long components, or else a pair of smaller parts side by side. In the latter case, if they are undergoing Op 10 and Op 20, one comes off completely machined every time the doors open. Alternatively, machine shops may place multiple small parts under the spindle for many hours of uninterrupted production.Typical applications include battery control boxes, chassis components or instrument panels for electric vehicles. Other target markets are the semiconductor and mould making sectors.

Users processing tool steels will benefit from the introduction of a 10,000 rpm/26.2 kW/92 Nm high-torque spindle option in place of the standard 12,000 rpm offering. Another option is a 16,000 rpm face-and-taper contact spindle. Through-coolant at 30 bar is standard,while70 bar is available on request.
For further information www.wmtcnc.com