November saw Colchester Machine Tool Solutions host its annual open house, an event that showcasedthe company’s latest products and innovations, including the all-new Tornado sub-spindle turning centre with Y-axis machining capability.

Taking place at Colchester’s European Technology Centre in Elland, West Yorkshire, the open house carried the strapline of ‘multi-axis machining event’. The company reports “overwhelmingly positive” feedback, with many visitors coming away feeling particularly impressed with the number and quality of machines on display. They were also pleased with the amount of machine demonstrations taking place, with Colchester staff on hand to provide additional information.

Taking centre stage was the all-new Colchester Tornado SL25 MSY turning centre. With its integrated sub-spindle and Yaxis, the machine provedpopular at the open house. Its five-axis single-hit machining allows manufacturers to complete complex components with high levels of efficiency. By automatically transferring the workpiece from the main spindle to the sub-spindle, the machine ensures seamless turning, milling and drilling on both sides of the component, reducing cycle times.The addition of Y-axis machining further enhances its capabilities, enabling precise off-centre milling for keyways, flats and contoured surfaces.

Also catching the eye of visitors was the UK debut of Bridgeport five-axis VMCs, a miniature Formula 1 car showpiece, manual centre lathes, Storm VMCs, Student CNC lathes and turret mills. Furthermore, Siemens, LNS, Zerocob and Cutwel were present throughout the event as trusted Colchester partners.

Throughout the open house, Colchester ran a ‘golf darts’ chipping competition where the participant with the highest score over a certain number of shots took away a £500 tooling voucher courtesy of open house partner and cutting tool specialist Cutwel. A first-year apprentice from Tees Components was the deserved winner.

More information www.colchester.co.uk

Mills CNC has supplied Bowers & Jones, a specialist in high-precision roll tooling and equipment for steel and copper mill customers across the world, with a new DN Solutions VTR 1216F: a large-capacity, wide-column, ram-type vertical turning lathe (VTL). The new machine operates at the company’s 1394m² manufacturing facility in Bilston, near Wolverhampton. It sits alongside three other machines supplied by Mills CNC over the past four years, including a Doosan Puma 5100B lathe and a DN Solutions GT 3100L box-guideway lathe.

Says Jane Sommerville, managing director at Bowers & Jones: “We needed a new large-capacity vertical lathe specifically to machine large-diameter straightening rings for the customer. It would also take pressure off an older Berry & Binns horizontal lathe that we acquired some years earlier. We approached Mills and two other suppliers to discuss our requirements and, looking at the proposed investment package as a whole – including cost, availability, machine design and configuration, operator familiarity, and aftersales support – decided to place the order with Mills.”

The FANUC-controlled 50-inch chuck VTR 1216F offers a maximum turning diameter of 1600 mm and a maximum turning height of 950 mm. Equipped with a thermally-stable 45 kW/400 rpm/20,557 Nm spindle, a servo-driven 12-tool ATC and an quad tool holder with fast indexing that enables the use of four tools directly via the ram, Mills CNC says the VTR 1216F delivers fast processing speeds, improved machining flexibility and high accuracy.

Bowers & Jones machines straightening rings on its VTR 1216F from D2, a high-carbon, high-chromium molybdenum-vanadium alloy tool steel that is highly abrasive. Machining takes place from solid round bar (cut to size) in relatively small batches.

More information www.millscnc.co.uk

Architectural ironmongery manufacturer Instinct Hardware has spent more than £500,000 in the past two years on a manufacturing execution system, a powder coating plant, a waterjet cutter and an Italian-built Biglia bar-fed, twin-spindle lathe with a ±45 mm Yaxis and 15 driven tools.It is the sixth CNC lathe and by far the most capable to arrive at the 68,000 sq ft factory in Stirchley, Birmingham.

The latest turning centre was sourced from Biglia’s sole UK agent Whitehouse Machine Tools. Whitehouse supplied the machine as a turnkey package with Hydrafeed short bar magazine for feeding 1.5-m long stock up to 80 mm in diameter, and a gantry-type system for unloading components onto a conveyor.

“We bought the turning centre specifically because it’s able to broach a square hole into our stainless steel handles, which Whitehouse demonstrated to us before we committed to the machine,” says director Nil Chohan.“We can now perform all operations in one hit, rather than in five or six operations using our previous production route.”

A case in point is the machining of a component assembled into a stainless steel, oval-profile, mitred lever handle. It previously required six machining operations, consuming a total of 15 minutes machining time plus 10 minutes or more handling and setup for each of the five additional operations – amounting to more than one hour overall. On the Biglia, the part comes off complete in 8.5 minutes, representing an eight-fold time saving, with the added benefit of eliminating work-in-progress and the potential for component damage.

More information www.wmtcnc.com