UK NEWS

Bystronic open house well attended

Nearly 100 people attended Bystronic UK’s latest three-day open house held at its Coventry showroom during September 2017. Visitors were able to see many of the latest technological advances from the Swiss company and witness presentations and practical demonstrations.

The event also allowed engineers to catch up on advances announced at Bystronic’s ‘Competence Days’ held in June at group headquarters in Niederönz. These included manufacturing software, MES, which is being developed in collaboration with Spanish company, Lantek; ByCockpit, an Industry 4.0-compatible app that monitors sheet metal machining processes in real time; a new rotary axis for processing tube on a ByStar Fiber flat-bed laser cutting machine; and Xpert 80, a new press brake that can be moved around a factory by fork lift truck, yet offers a bending capacity of 80 tonnes over 1.5 m in a footprint of less than 3 sq m.
For further information www.bystronic.co.uk

Toyoda appoints new agent for UK

With immediate effect, Whitehouse Machine Tools has been appointed to sell and service in the UK and Irish markets the vertical- and horizontal-spindle machining centres supplied by Toyoda Machinery Europe GmbH, based in Krefeld, Germany. A spokesperson for the Toyoda says: “We decided to award the agency to Whitehouse Machine Tools partly due to the level of service they are able to provide customers.

The agent also has a strong applications engineering capability, which is important to us. The gear skiving process on Toyoda machining centres, for instance, is a good example of a technology that requires a high level of engineering support.”
For further information www.wmtcnc.com

XYZ names new distribution partners

XYZ Machine Tools’ attendance at the EMO exhibition in Hanover last month proved to be successful, and the company is already planning for its return in 2019. Although sales within mainland Europe have increased by 12% in the past 12 months, the stated aim of attending EMO was to increase the company’s distribution. With extensive dialogue taking place on the stand, additional partners look likely within mainland Europe and Africa. Indeed, export sales director Howard Bamforth comfirms the finalising of two distribution deals, one with PBS Machine Tools in South Africa and the second with CNC Island, based in Iceland.

“We’ve had limited sales to both South Africa and Iceland before, but with these two distributors coming on board it is exciting times for both territories. In fact, we are already seeing the positive effects, with two machines on their way to Iceland that will be supported in the coming weeks with a visit by one of our applications engineers.”
For further information www.xyzmachinetools.com

Crossen votes for VISI

Anyone who voted in the UK general election and last year’s American presidential election is likely to have slotted their paper into ballot boxes manufactured for election solutions provider, Pakflatt, by injection-moulding specialist Crossen Engineering.

Operating from a 22,000 sq ft facility in Belfast with 32 employees, Crossen produces all of its own tooling, ranging from aluminium alloy moulds for small-to-medium batch production, through to fully hardened hot-runner moulds for runs of more than 500,000 components.
“Every mould we make is designed in VISI and manufactured on our range of Hurco CNC milling machines,” says Crossen’s business development manager Peter Crossen. “We’ve also recently invested in a Röders high-speed machining centre, mainly for the quick turnaround of complex mould inserts.”
The other side to the family-run operation is press tools. Crossen has 13 presses in place, ranging in capacity from 50 to 500 tonnes, and all press tooling is also designed exclusively using VISI and manufactured in-house.
“We review a customer’s CAD file in VISI and then design the tool around that file,” says Crossen. “We can easily make adjustments to aspects such as wall thicknesses, part radii and draft angle.”
Although the company has run the VISI CAD module for several years, Crossen has only recently installed VISI Flow, which is now playing an increasingly important part in the process. This ‘preventative analysis’ software optimises tool design and moulding parameters by detecting a range of potential manufacturing issues such as warpage, weld lines, air traps, filling issues and hot spots, while determining the optimum gate size and position, along with runners.
For further information www.visicadcam.com

Hull contract for MTL

MTL Advanced has won a contract for the serial production of armoured steel hulls for one of the largest defence OEMs in Europe. The company claims to be Europe’s biggest contract manufacturer of armoured steel structures, with projects ranging from piece-part kits, turrets and blast floors, to fully fabricated, painted and assembled hulls.

In the past three years, MTL has received over £8.5m of investment in state-of-the-art laser cutting, robotic welding and machining technology. MTL says the site also boasts the UK’s largest laser-cutting machine with an automated handling system.
For further information www.mtladv.com