In 2015 Ray Harris set up his own subcontracting company, Driven Precision Engineering, to specialise in F1 manufacturing. He rents space on the shop floor of LW&T Engineering, another contract machining firm in the Farlington district of Portsmouth.

A second-hand, three-axis machining centre was his first purchase, followed by a five-axis model from the same supplier a year later. The latter machine extended the complexity of work that could be taken on by exploiting simultaneous five-axis machining and allowing more efficient manufacture of standard parts by positioning and clamping the two rotary axes.
To add another spindle and increase the size of work that can be undertaken to 850 x 700 x 500 mm, his latest purchase is another five-axis machining centre, this time a Hermle C400 supplied by Geo Kingsbury. Harris describes how he came to buy a machine costing significantly more than a five-axis machining centre of equivalent capacity from the incumbent supplier.
“It was our tooling supplier, Betta-Cut in Southampton, that suggested we look at Hermle, as the sales engineer is an ex-employee of Geo Kingsbury and knew the machines well,” he says. “I searched on the internet and found only positive comments about the machines. Normally you can unearth some negatives about machine tools on discussion forums, but I couldn’t find any about Hermle.
“Then I went to a subcontractor in Gosport, Norjon, whose owner Kevin Fox has operated five-axis Hermles for many years and now has five,” he continues. “He didn’t have a bad word to say about them either, so the C400 more or less sold itself.”
For further information www.geokingsbury.com

Around 10 years ago, Jan van Jaarsveld bought Clayton Precision Engineering and made the decision to concentrate on the aerospace industry. Today around 90% of the company’s business comes from this sector, including a long-term contract to supply parts and assemblies for the world’s largest manufacturer of ejector seats.

“The business is going from strength-to-strength,” he says. “Three years ago Clayton merged with another specialist engineering company, RA Fores Ltd. This merger dictated a move into a second unit, more than doubling our floor area, which we began filling with new Haas CNC equipment.
“We like the Haas machines; they’re quick, accurate and reliable and the back-up has been outstanding,” he adds. “Over the years, I’ve invested heavily in Haas; currently we have two Mini Mills, a VF-1 and seven VF-2SS Super Speed verticals. The most recent arrival is a five-axis VF-2SS with a trunnion table.”
The new five-axis machine is currently producing L168 aluminium components for ejector seats, reducing the number of operations from eight to just two. Furthermore, cycle times have been cut by 25%.
“It goes without saying that accuracy is vital when you’re dealing with parts that save lives,” says van Jaarsveld. “Our inspection department maintains quality control. All testing equipment is calibrated to national standards and we operate a TQM policy with recorded inspection undertaken at every stage of the job.”
Haas Automation’s VF-2SS has 762 x 406 x 508 mm travels, and comes as standard with a 12,000 rpm spindle and a 24+1 side-mount tool changer for tool changes that take less than 1.6 seconds tool-to-tool.
For further information www.haas.co.uk