Cheshire Seals & Components Ltd (Cheshire Seals), based in Warrington, has recently extended its workshop capacity with a new Harrison Alpha 1550XS manual/CNC lathe from Colchester Machine Tool Solutions.

Managing director Paul Wallace says: “We had an existing Colchester centre lathe which had been very useful to us, but we needed the machining flexibility that the Alpha could bring. We bought plenty of extra kit for the Alpha and from day one it’s been put through its paces. The machine is performing well and is certainly earning its money.”
Cheshire Seals is a family-run, independent manufacturer of machined parts in a wide variety of materials, ranging from aluminium to zirconium, taking in duplex stainless steels and nickel alloys, and many exotic metals, through to plastics and rubbers for seal manufacture. The company also takes initial customer design concepts and converts them into fully finished products, whether it’s a one-off prototype or a full production run.
Wallace adds: “We looked at other CNC machines but felt that the flexibility of the Alpha lathe and its various modes of operation within the Fanuc system were strong factors in our decision. We find that the machine torque is excellent for cutting harder materials, while the lathe has significantly improved our cutting and program creation times by using ISO programming and the eight-station turret.”
The 2 m between-centres Harrison Alpha 1550XS has a swing over bed of 554 mm and a 104 mm spindle bore. A large 15 kW motor allows spindle speeds up to 2000 rpm.
For further information www.colchester.co.uk