Michael Phillips, joint owner with partner Wayne Robins of contract machining firm Atomic Precision, describes the company’s recently-purchased Japanese-built Brother Speedio U500Xd1 as “a Swiss army knife of five-axis machining centres”. His comment is due to the 30-taper machine’s quality, versatile functionality, compact footprint, and ability to complete an extensive range of jobs quickly and efficiently. Brother machines are sold and serviced in the UK and Ireland by sole agent Whitehouse Machine Tools.

Founded in East Hendred, Oxfordshire, a succession of 40-taper VMCs from another supplier arrived on the shop floor over the next four years, a trio of three-axis models and two five-axis machines. During that time, the subcontractor enjoyed an impressive growth rate of 50% year on year.

As a first step to raising productivity even further, the high-speed Brother U500Xd1 was installed and commissioned by Whitehouse Machine Tools in September 2024. The partners became aware of the machine at the Southern Manufacturing 2023 exhibition in Farnborough. After early hesitation regarding the smaller spindle interface, which later proved to be a non-issue, and benchmarking a couple of other 30-taper machines on the market, the order was placed.

“The area taken up on our shop floor by the U500Xd1 is half of the space that one of our 40-taper five-axis machines occupies, yet the 30-taper VMC actually produces larger parts,” explains Phillips. “Not only that, but the Speedio finishes an identical component in two-thirds of the time, as the non-cutting elements of cycles are incredibly short, so tools are in-cut for typically 90% of the time during a cycle. The linear axes accelerate at 2.2 g up to 56 m/min and chip-to-chip time is 1.3 seconds.”

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