UK NEWS

MAN creates 125 jobs after record year

An industrial collective is casting aside the shadows of Brexit by recording its best ever year, with a £10m increase in sales, paving the way for 125 new jobs. The Manufacturing Assembly Network (MAN), which comprises eight subcontract manufacturers and an engineering design agency, has taken full advantage of the positive exchange rate and a desire to utilise British innovation to win contracts across the automotive, aerospace, electronics, renewables and medical sectors.

All nine firms have experienced growth over the past 12 months and benefitted from sharing best practice, purchasing power and working together to target new clusters. The expansion now means that MAN employs a 1000-strong combined workforce across 15 factories and boasts an order book that is fast approaching £90m, with 40% sent overseas.
For further information www.man-group.co.uk

Machine investment set to create jobs

Derby-based Riverside Medical Packaging, which has tapped into the capabilities of the Engineering Technology Group for a Quaser MV 184 PH to help support a ramp up in volumes and ensure its machining shop can meet growing demand from customers in the UK, EU,
India and Israel.

Riverside, a healthcare packaging specialist, is targeting up to 40 additional jobs and looking to more than quadruple sales of its ‘shawpak’ thermoforming machinery as the medical sector strives for more cost effective packaging solutions. The company has invested nearly £100,000 in developing a turnkey solution for the Quaser vertical machining centre, which utilises novel spindle technology, the latest Heidenhain controls, a newly developed grease replenishing system and two touch probe measuring systems from Blum-Novotest.
“As part of the expansion, we needed a vertical machining centre that offered us speed, accuracy and the ability to easily set and manufacture a variety of parts for use in our ‘shawpak’ machines,” states works and engineering director Alan Wade.” After much consideration and searching the sector for the best option, we decided on the Quaser MV 184 PH. It took just six weeks to get the machine into our Derby facility, signed off and producing various parts in volumes ranging from 2000 to more than 35,000 per annum. The MV 184 PH comes with greater memory, the latest Heidenhain controls and a grease replenishing system that makes lights-out manufacturing relatively easy.”
For further information www.engtechgroup.com

Mikron machine acquired by Renault F1

Oxfordshire-based Renault Sport Formula One Team has taken delivery of a Mikron HPM 800U five-axis machining centre from GF Machining Solutions.

Since installation, the HPM 800U has been put to work machining a diverse range of parts, including a number of gearbox inserts made from titanium. Apart from some wire EDM profiling operations, which take up to 12 hours to complete, the inserts are five-axis machined entirely on the HPM 800U. Material removal rates are high (over 85% of the titanium is removed during roughing and finishing operations), and the inserts are machined to a high accuracy and require an excellent surface finish.
“Despite such demands, our HPM 800U machines have not been found wanting and are among the most accurate, dynamic and reliable machining centres we have in our facility,” says machine shop manager Raphael Willie.
“A few years ago we made a strategic decision to increase our five-axis milling capabilities and selected GF Machining Solutions as the technical partner to help us achieve our objectives,” he adds. “The partnership means that we are able to acquire the latest Mikron five-axis machines at highly competitive rates, and have direct access to GF Machining Solutions’ technical and applications expertise.
“As a consequence we are able to fully embrace the concept of one-hit and simultaneous five-axis machining, and to experience productivity gains, improved machine tool utilisation, increased component accuracies, and reduced set-up and part cycle times.”
For further information www.gfms.com/uk

Aerospace firm expands five-axis machining

A seventh five-axis machining centre has been installed at Preston-based, tier-two aerospace subcontractor, TGM, primarily to cope with increasing volumes of Airbus A350 work. Two years ago, each month the firm was delivering four port and starboard aircraft wing sets comprising 20 parts each, whereas today 10 sets per month are required and the number will climb further over the next two years.

The latest addition to the firm’s five-axis capacity is a Hurco VMX42SRTi, which has conversational programming capability built into its WinMax control system. TGM director Sarah Stephens says: “We already had eight three-axis Hurco machining centres on-site, including one with an add-on rotary axis, so were familiar with the manufacturer’s twin-screen, menu-driven control system and graphical user interface.
“Our operators have always found it to be user friendly for shop-floor programming, and on the latest machine only the fifth B-axis that swivels the spindle head is different, so adaptation was easy,” she adds. “The skill sets were already in place to create five-axis cycles involving the positioning of both rotary axes.
“We purchased extra WinMax software to run on a laptop and use it to program around 90% of jobs run on the Hurcos, including the five-axis machine, with data for the remaining work entered at the controls on the shop floor. Essentially, the Hurco software is an inexpensive way of preparing components for 3+2-axis machining. It is like an extra CAM seat but costs vastly less than the £50,000 purchase price and £5000 annual maintenance of one of our top-end CADCAM packages alone.”
For further information www.hurco.co.uk

Marine firm installs Heller machines

Heller reports that the installation of two of its five-axis machining centres, one with turning capability, has transformed the efficiency and repeatability with which marine components are machined at an offshore equipment manufacturer and refurbishment centre in the UK.

Four alternative proposals from different suppliers were considered before opting for the Heller solution. One possibility was to install a five-axis machine fitted with a rotary table on a swivelling trunnion. The problem with this type of machine is that the Z-axis stroke is too limited to allow the drilling of deep holes in the top of the casting, unless an unduly large and costly machine had been purchased. Heller FP/CT 4000 machines offer machining capacity with up to 1000 mm in the Z axis.
Previously, the process for machining cast steel components was labour intensive, involving highly skilled machinists setting up each part 16 times on manual mills, drilling machines and lathes. Lead time from customer order to delivery was 24 weeks, partly because machining took a 40 hour man week, typically spread over a month.
Today, the whole process has been reduced from 24 to just six weeks, as the parts can now be milled and drilled in one hit on both Heller five-axis machining centres, and also turned in the case of the second machine. Within the family of six sizes of component, one variant, for example, now takes just nine hours to mill and drill, and requires a further one hour for turning operations.
For further information www.heller.biz