Charles Day Steelsturns to Water Jet Sweden

Established over four decades ago in the heart of Sheffield, Charles Day Steels has recently invested in a new Beveljet 60 five-axis waterjet cutting machine from Water Jet Sweden for both bevel and free-form cutting.

With typical waterjet pumps on average only producing 3000-4000 bar of cutting pressure from 50-60 hp, the new pump on the Beveljet 60 can produce 6200 bar of cutting pressure through two heads simultaneously using its sizeable 125hp of power. This capability provides customers with a time- and cost-efficient waterjet cutting process.

Charlie Day, grandson of the founder and sales and business development director at Charles Day, says: “We’re already experts in waterjet cutting and have been offering the service for over 20 years, but the addition of the Water Jet Sweden BevelJet 60 cutting head opens up a whole new market. Not only can we provide large 2D parts on a quick turnaround, we can also offer large 3D parts, again at a dramatically increased cut speed, at a competitive price.”

One of the stand-out features of the Bevel Waterjet is its cutting head, which can process parts at angles of up to 60°. This capability allows for the creation of intricate and precise 3D shapes. Furthermore, equipped with a 125hp pump operating at 6200 bar, the Waterjet Sweden BevelJet 60 cam slice through materials known for their formidable hardness, including the likes of wearplate and Hardox.

Another novel feature is its dual-head configuration (one 3D and one 2D) that facilitates simultaneous cutting at high pressure through each head. This approach reduces production times, offering expedited results without compromising the quality of the final product.
For further information www.waterjetsweden.co.uk

Laitila invests in punch-laser combination machine

Laitila Coating already had two turret punch presses, but now arrived the need for a machine that could combine punching and laser technology, with the company opting for a Combi Sharp 1225 from Prima Power with Compact Express automation.

Managing director Kai Salo and production director Petri Kallio from Laitila Coating Oy visited Prima Power’s Seinäjoki factory prior to the purchase.

“We wanted to see what the machine is capable of and what its limits are,” explains Salo.“Tests confirmed the ability of the machine to cut burr-free 6 mm copper, which we use in electrical conductors, for example. Initially, the discussion focused on 1kW fibre model, but after more assessmentwe upgraded to 3kW, which is better suited to our purpose.

“This machine investment will be the missing piece we have needed for a long time,” he continues.“In recent years, we’ve been determined to push a strategy whereby our company offers customers a more versatile and wider package under one roof: mechanics as finished products with surface treatment. The sheet metal side has needed an update to make us even more credible. Now we can offer both punching and laser cutting for sheet-like products alongside the already existing waterjet cutting.”

The work situation in Laitila has grown steadily and the future looks very promising.”

“We know that our company’s service capability and efficiency will improve, and we have all the conditions to do well in the market,” says Salo.“We want to grow profitably and continue to invest as much as possible. We’ll continue to be a credible and significant partner in sheet metal work, alongside the former busbar production.”
For further information www.primapower.com

AUTOMATED MILL-TURN CENTRE FROM BROTHER IS OPTIMAL FOR SUBCONTRACTOR’S UNATTENDED PRODUCTION

A shortage of skilled engineers and a desire to continue with single day shift operation over an existing pattern of a four-day working week have all played a part over the past five years in prompting JWA CNC to research the best way of automating its production. The process led in early March 2023 to the purchase of a Brother 30-taper M200X3 mill-turn centre with integrated BV7 component stocker and robotic handling. Installed in one of the subcontractor’s two factory units in Leicester, the Japanese manufacturer’s sole sales and service agent for the UK and Ireland, Whitehouse Machine Tools, supplied the turnkey cell.

Currently serving mainly the aerospace and defence industries, as well as the emerging hydrogen fuel cell sector, JWA CNC produces a lot of prismatic machined components in mainly non-ferrous materials such as aluminium, stainless steel, copper, brass and plastics, often to single-figure micron tolerances. They are required in relatively limited quantities in the range 30- to 100-off, sometimes fewer if they are for R&D projects, so the company needs automated production systems that are fast to change over.

Pete Wood, operations director at JWA CNC, says: “The automation of lathes is easy using bar magazines and we have numerous such turning cells on our shop floor. However, the autonomous production of milled components is more challenging because of the high diversity of shapes and small batch quantities.”

He adds: “The typical selling price of prismatic parts going through our factory does not justify the purchase of a machining centre with a pallet storage and retrieval system, as they tend to be expensive and are also space-hungry. So robotic handling of the components themselves into and out of the machining area was a necessity.”

An early move towards this type of automation to compete with manufacturers in low-wage countries took shape three years ago when the company decided to add a six-axis collaborative robot to a four-axis BT40 machining centre on the shop floor. Operating with a single tray of parts, it works well unattended but has a couple of drawbacks. First, it is relatively slow to exchange a finish-machined component for a new billet, taking around 3.5 minutes; and second, the automation requires a lot of space.

In contrast, the Brother system avoids both of these negatives by executing component exchange in well under half a minute and by compressing the machining centre complete with its automation into a 3.5 x 4.1 m footprint, only a little larger than that occupied by the cobot alone. With space at a premium at the Leicester facility, the compactness of the new cell is an important plus-point.

The integral robot delivering load/unload of the individual workpieces has four CNC axes, three rotational and one linear, into and out of the machine via an automatic door. It carries twin grippers with the end effectors opposed to each other at 180°. They load and unload parts into and out of a pneumatically-actuated fixture on the rotary table mounted on a trunnion that swivels from +120° to -30°. According to JWA CNC’s technical director Tim Shillabeer, the fact that a four-axis rather than a six-axis robot performs component transfer reduces set-up time and gives him confidence in a high level of ongoing operational reliability.

Notable aspects of the Brother M200X3 are that it is the third BT30 machining centre in the factory but the first with a face-and-taper spindle. It is also the second five-axis model on site and the only milling centre with a torque table capable of turning components in the same set-up. Several parts produced by JWA CNC require pre-turning before prismatic machining, so there will be a saving by performing both operations on the Brother, especially if the subsequent five-axis milling and drilling allows parts to exit the machine in fewer set-ups, or perhaps even one.

Another advantage of 30-taper machining centres is that they are highly productive. The Brother machine, for example, has 50 m/min rapids in the linear axes and fast rotary motions that reposition a part for the next cut while the 1.4-second chip-to-chip tool change is taking place, avoiding undue idle time. The 16,000 rpm face-and-taper contact spindle deploys 22 cutters in the tool magazine,combining speed with precision.

According to Brother, an often overlooked additional benefit of a 30-taper machine over a 40-taper model is that, due to the former’s high productivity, it is possible to produce a typical part faster and with less energy. Combined with numerous efficiency measures inside the machine, such as reduced air consumption, hybrid drive motors with power regeneration, high efficiency pumps and auto-off functions, it results in less power consumption per part manufactured.

Brother claims an overall reduction in energy consumption of around 80% compared with using a 40-taper machine to produce any given component. With the M200X3 installation being so recent, JWA CNC is unable to substantiate this saving. What it can say, however, is that with electricity costs having nearly quadrupled in the first six months of 2023, every little helps.
For further information www.wmtcnc.com

Duright looks to the future with tube lasers

The latest machine investments at UK tube cutting and processing subcontractor Duright Engineering are two BLM LT7 fibre laser tube machines.

“The pandemic proved to be some of our busiest years and, in part, drove our decision to invest in our first BLM LT7,” says managing director Ross Taylor. “It provided a step-change in technology regarding how easy and quick it was to set.”

Pleasantly surprised by how quickly operators adapted to the new technology of the BLM LT7 fibre laser, Taylor placed an order for a second machine within 12 months.

“At Duright, we run an extremely tight production system, with every job and operation barcoded so everything has an allocated time, whether that be set-up or production,” he says.“Our target is to achieve 80% efficiency on a daily basis, with 80-84% being the typical figure. The new BLM LT7 machines are achieving 93% efficiency, even with 10 or 12 changeovers in a 24-hour period. This is a big benefit as we operate 24/6, pushing machines as hard as they can go.”

BLM Group has been a supplier to Duright Engineering for many years, a relationship built on trust and machine quality, alongside robust technical support. As Taylor suggests, the machines work hard and the LT712 laser tube that the LT7s are superseding has been at Duright for 14 years and still produces parts efficiently and to high quality. However, the LT7 brings added benefits.

“The LT7 cuts so much faster than the old machine,” states Taylor. “Fibre laser technology has come on leaps and bounds and the speed at which we can change from one job to another, with limited operator input, is major step forward.”
For further information www.blmgroup.com

EMPIRE STRIKES BACK BY INVESTING IN DUGARD MACHINES

When Empire Manufacturing Ltd opened in 2007 with an initial purchase of three sliding-head turning centres, it was the building block for a company that has gone from strength to strength. In 2012, the business moved to a larger facility and subsequently added more sliding-head turning centres, with machining centres, measuring equipment and fixed-head turning centres following suit. More recently, the company,which has technology from several machine tool vendors, has invested in machines from Dugard.

In 2022, the Hoddesdon-based company made a paradigm shift in vendors when it bought a fixed-head SMEC SL2000-BSY turning centre with bar-feed unit, a Robojob robot loader and a Roto-Rack parts catcher. Rapidly following this order was a Hanwha XD10 sliding-head lathe, again from Dugard. Yet another Hanwha sliding-head lathe is the latest machine to arrive.

As an established sliding-head turning shop machining a vast range of products from washers, nuts and bolts (as well as fastenings and bottle tops) through to highly complex and intricate components, the Hertfordshire company wanted to increase its capacity for machining small components. To alleviate a bottleneck on an existing 10 mm capacity sliding-head turning centre, the subcontract manufacturer invested in a Hanwha XD10 sliding-head lathe from Dugard.

Recalling the situation, managing director Stuart Wade says: “We were getting regular orders for small copper components in quantities from 8000 to 12,000-off and needed extra capacity. Our existing machine tool supplier didn’t have a machine available in the timeframe required, so we decided to look at the Hanwha machine from Dugard. We quickly discovered that the PCR chip-breaking cycle on the Hanwha machine is far superior to what we already had.This technology would allow us to run more jobs unmanned and extend our tool life.”

After purchasing the first Hanwha machine from Dugard, Empire Manufacturing quickly realised that the Hanwha machine was also better at holding tolerance on long runs of components. One particular example is a frequent production run of stainless steel M3 and M4 tight-tolerance screws with a weight limit tolerance of ±0.3mg. Inevitably there were some scrap components when machining screws on its existing sliding-head machines. However, switching the parts to the Hanwha reduced the scrap rate considerably and eradicated the need for constant operator intervention.

As a long-time sliding-head business owner, Wade says: “The ability of the Hanwha machines to hold tolerance is on another level; I’ve never seen anything like it on a sliding-head. There are also a lot of features on the Hanwha machines that stand out from our existing technology. It’s for these reasons we opted to buy a second Hanwha when the requirement was there. Another reason we opted for another machine from Dugard was the service; it genuinely is outstanding and better than anything we receive from other machine tool suppliers.”

The SMEC SL2000-BSY turning centre was the first purchase from Dugard and, while this machine was on order, Empire Manufacturing ordered and took delivery of a Hanwha machine. The performance and availability of the Hanwha resulted in a second Hanwha soon following.

Recalling the purchase of the fixed-head model, Wade says: “We had a gantry-loaded turning centre that has performed well down the years. However, it was creating a lot of problems with the unloading of finished parts. Loading billets via the gantry was a simple task but the more complicated our parts became, the more the machine would fail on the unloading operation and it would damage parts during unloadingin many cases.

“The service we received from the existing supplier was indifferent, so we looked at other potential machine tool vendors,” he continues.“We decided to invest in a SMEC SL2000-BSY fixed-head turning centre with a 2m bar-feed unit, a Robojob robot loader and a Roto-Rack parts catcher. Dugard and Hydrafeedhandled the entire integration of the turning centre with an automated robot loading system and the Roto-Rack part collection system.”

SMEC’s SL2000BSY is a single-turret, twin-spindle turning centre with an 8-inch chuck on the main spindle, a 6-inch chuck on the sub-spindle and a 650mm swing over the bed that provides considerable machining capacity for a small footprint lathe. With 12 tool positions as standard (24 optional) and a BMT55 5000rpm driven tool facility with a 3.7/5.5kW motor, Dugard says the SMEC SL2000BSY provides unrivalled flexibility and productivity in a spacious machine envelope.

As a subcontract company to the aerospace, electronics, automotive, leisure and entertainment sectors, precision and quality is a necessity.

“Investing in the SMEC SL2000BSY eradicated our issues with unloading parts and we rapidly ramped up to extended periods of unmanned machining,” explains Wade.“At present we’re manufacturing a range of fuel filter caps and distributor bodies for the automotive and aerospace markets and some parts will vary from 100 to 1000-off. Other billet loaded parts could run from 500 to 1000-off with bar-fed parts stretching to runs of 3000 to 10,000-off.”

He adds: “With the previous machine, we had major unloading issues that prevented extended unmanned operation. The reliability of the machine and support from the supplier were very poor. In some instances, the temperamental nature of the machine would see it shut down with no alarms, only to work perfectly fine the next day.

“We needed to make a change and we’re glad we opted for the SMEC. The machine will typically run for around 20 hours a day, leaving some time for swarf clearing and insert changes. The aluminium automotive parts on the SMEC at present have a machining cycle of 20 minutes and we can load the Robojob with 40 parts at a time.This gives us over 13 hours of unmanned running. Unlike the previous gantry machine, we can simply remove the parts from the Robojob pallets and tell the machine to keep going. With such flexibility we can minimise downtime and achieve incredible productivity rates. We really couldn’t be happier with both the quality of the machines and the impeccable level of service we received from Dugard.”
For further information www.dugard.com