UK NEWS

Help dealing with late payments

The recently launched office of the Small Business Commissioner is offering a free service to help small firms deal with late payments.

Based in Birmingham, the office was created to ensure fair payment practices for Britain’s 5.7 million small businesses and support them in resolving their payment disputes with larger companies. Established under the Enterprise Act 2016, the SBC is headed by the Small Business Commissioner Paul Uppal, and is part of a package of measures to tackle late payment practices between businesses across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
For further information www.smallbusinesscommissioner.gov.uk

ITC supports north with apps engineer

In line with its expansion strategy, which has seen year-on-year sales increases exceeding 15% over the past five years, Industrial Tooling Corporation (ITC) has appointed applications engineer Gary Murrey to its growing team.

He will support the sales efforts of northern area technical sales engineers, Jason Clark and Gary Heaney. Murrey has almost 30 years of experience that includes an apprenticeship as a machinist at shipbuilder Vosper Thornycroft and lengthy periods as a five-axis machinist and programmer with GE Aviation. He was also a production and applications engineer with the 600 Group and a senior manufacturing engineer at VTL.
For further information www.itc-ltd.co.uk

Compact turn-mill machine for large parts

A turn-mill centre with an upper B-axis spindle having a ±150 mm Y axis and an optional lower BMT turret with the possibility of a ±40 mm Y axis and live tooling and has been introduced by DMG Mori for the bar machining of components up to 1.5 m long and 102 mm diameter.

The 675 mm X-axis travel of the CompactMaster direct-drive milling spindle, which is just 350 mm long, adds to the versatility of the new NTX 3000 second-generation multi-tasking centre. Also featured is a tool magazine with 38 stations (114 optional), tool-breakage monitoring and integral tool measurement.
DMG Mori’s NTX 3000 is capable of simultaneous five-axis CNC machining, yet occupies a footprint of just 16.5 sq m. The main spindle can produce rotational speeds up to 3000 rpm and offers a maximum torque of 1194 Nm. A counter-spindle is optional for machining on all six faces of a component, while a tailstock may also be specified.
A machine bed with roller guideways is designed to offer high process stability and flexibility. In addition, water cooling of the spindles, ballscrews and ball nuts ensures thermal stability in continuous operation, while magnetic-scale feedback of linear position to a resolution of 0.01 µm is a further option, as is a range of automated workpiece handling systems.
The NTX 3000 is equipped with the proprietary CELOS app-based control and user interface to either a Siemens or Fanuc CNC system. The 21”, multi-touch CELOS display works as an Industry 4.0 interface, providing the basis for cross-company networking. Various DMG Mori technology cycles are available, including ‘easy tool monitoring’, which monitors spindle load and axis thrust.
For further information www.dmgmori.com

Locomotive gets back up to steam

The workshops of the Llangollen Railway provide maintenance for the firm’s own rolling stock, as well as supporting other heritage railways around the UK and building brand new steam locomotives to order.

Like many such organisations, Llangollen Railway relies on donations, not only of cash and time, but also machine tools. However, when one particular project came up, the decision was taken to invest in new machinery in the form of an XYZ SLX 425 ProTurn lathe.
Llangollen Railway was tasked with the restoration of the iconic streamlined A4-class locomotive, Sir Nigel Gresley. In its life, the locomotive has had many overhauls, and the latest is taking place in full public view at the National Railway Museum in York by the Sir Nigel Gresley Locomotive Company Volunteers, except for its boiler, which has been stripped of its streamlining and transferred to Llangollen for refurbishment and re-certification. Part of the work involves replacing the boiler stays. As the boiler requires 296 of these stays of various lengths, with Whitworth threads at either end, an upgrade from manual turning was deemed wise.
The railway therefore took the decision to invest in an XYZ SLX 425 ProTurn lathe with 1.25 m between centres; a selection that is paying dividends as each boiler stay can now be machined complete in half the time that they previously took on a manual lathe.
“The ProtoTrak control makes life very easy as it guides you through everything; the ‘Traking’ feature is very handy and the ‘Do-One’ canned cycle feature in the control is extremely useful for machining features such as radii and chamfers,” says machinist Michael O’Toole.
For further information www.xyzmachinetools.com

Lead-time reduced for plastic components

The ability to change its recently installed Citizen Cincom A20-VII sliding-head turn-mill centre into a non-guide bush variant for applications on plastic components and shorter length parts, while retaining the guide bush assembly for longer parts, has enabled Colpa Precision Engineering to cut weeks from its lead time with significantly reduced material costs.

Says general manager Martin Branch: “The removable guide bush feature on the Cincom A20 has increased our competitiveness in a tight market as we no longer have to order pre-ground bar for plastic components, which has not only reduced material cost but saved four weeks on our lead time to customers and enabled us to pick-up new business.”
Branch also confirms that by replacing an ageing Citizen Cincom C16 with the new A20, Colpa is slightly reducing cycle times, but more important to customers, improving productivity, consistency, uptime and machining accuracy, which is again helping to lower lead times.
Recent investment has been consistent at Colpa with some £560,000 spent over the past three years. In addition to machining centres and fixed-head lathes, six Citizen sliding-head machines are installed at the Watford site. The recent Cincom A20-VII installation is now mainly used for plastic parts and some aluminium, to which Branch says: “We ran our first production batch with the guide bush installed and then removed it in less than 45 minutes. So
far we have never used it again due to the advantages that we gained without it on smaller parts.”
For further information www.citizenmachinery.co.uk