A challenging change
During the past 12 months turned parts specialist, Technoturn, has made some
dramatic changes to its facilities, including relocating all of its lathes to one
extensively refurbished machine shop, and adding additional capacity and
functionality to its processes. Solutions reports.
Based in St Leonard's on Sea, Technoturn provides high quality precision turned
components to a broad but demanding customer base, including utility and power
supply companies, motorsport, aerospace, defence, telecomms and other high-end
engineering companies.
Half way through 2004 Technoturn invested in its first fix head lathe, a 6-axis
Miyano BNJ-42 CNC turning centre, which was a departure from the company's
expertise with a range of Swiss type sliding head lathes. A brave move, it was
purchased to provide a capacity without any specific workload. However, the existing
customer base had a need for larger turned parts supplied to the same quality levels
and committed delivery times that they had come to expect from the company.
Managing director, David McIlwain, explains: "We knew that the Miyano range had a
good reputation in our sector, from discussions with other BTMA members and from
talking to various engineers. You hardly ever see one up for sale, so the companies
that invest in them, like them and keep them. I would say they are at the top-end of
the machine tool range but, as with many things in life, you get what you pay for. The
functionality of the lathe is so high that we have yet to put any work on it that requires
a second operation."
The available operating time on the spindle soon filled and six months after
installation it was running at full capacity. With an obvious need within the customer
base for precision 42 mm diameter parts a second Miyano was ordered, this time it
was the even more capable 7-axis BNJ-42SY. The additional functionality is
important because wherever possible parts are completed in one hit.
Installed at the end of 2004, like the 6-axis machine the new lathe also features the
"butterfly" back working tooling turret, which allows the horizontally opposed
spindles to meet for parts transfer and part off. This design reduces cycle times on
symmetrical parts by around 50 per cent and even conventional components can have
cycle times 35 per cent shorter.
These are very capable turning machines, with massive throughput.
We thought that we would have a problem filling the capacity up, but
the success of this foray into larger turned parts has been so great that
we have contemplated going even larger, states Mr. McIlwain.
Speaking about the lathes, John Stretton, managing director of Miyano, says: "The
Miyano range of lathes has been developed to be complimentary to the Swiss type
sliding head lathes, with operators familiar with one being able to quickly adapt to the
other."
A fact backed up by Technoturn's experience, as Mr. McIlwain confirms: "After the
first Miyano was installed, our two main engineers were setting the machine after just
three days training, so the learning curve is not as steep as we thought it would be.
And, when the second lathe hit the ground it was in production almost immediately."
The new lathe is currently running an aerospace connector turned from a high grade
aluminum alloy, although the Miyano lathes at Technoturn are used to turn a whole
spectrum of ferrous and non-ferrous metals. They are set up for each job to be run, so
the ease of setting is important to the overall efficiency of the business. Swarf
clearance is very good and the strength and rigidity of the machine is such that the
company can put the maximum bar size through it, even 316 stainless steel, and turn it
with a seriously deep cut.
Nothing stands still in our business, and further investment is inevitable," concludes
Mr. McIlwain. "Currently we are investigating turning equipment specifically for
some of the short component, high volume work we do."
Technoturn focuses on constant development
Since it was set up ten years ago, Technoturn’s story has been one of constant
development its latest move has been to complement its capabilities by investing in a
sophisticated Amsonic automatic part cleaning system and OGP Smart Scope noncontact
inspection equipment.
Hastings based Technoturn was originally focused on high-volume, long-running,
commercial turned products manufactured on sliding head automatic lathes. In 1998 it
made its first move into CNC manufacture, when Fred Moser, CEO of the Techno
group, saw an article in a magazine about a company that was operating 24/7
unmanned and thought, why can’t we do that here
As he explains, we invested in two CNC sliding head machines? A Traub and a Star -
and tested the water to see if it could be done. We couldn’t even contemplate running
unmanned with the original mechanical autos. They were far too labour intensive,
coping with Swarf was a problem and if something broke they would just keep
ploughing on creating a tremendous fire risk.
It soon became clear that CNC was the way to go, and by 2003 Technoturn had sold
all of its mechanical machines and was operating 18 CNC sliding head machines
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. However, sliding heads, even CNC ones,
aren’t the right answer for everything, and so last year Technoturn decided to invest in
a fixed head CNC Miyano BNJ 42S.
We had never had fixed head machines, says Technoturn's MD David McIlwain, but
we had always done a lot of short, stubby components. When we got the Miyano we
quickly filled it with work from our existing customers. So we ordered another, this
time a Y-axis BNJ 42SY. Pretty soon that was working to capacity too, so now we’ve
ordered a third machine which is due in September.
The Miyanos increase Technoturn’s machining capacity to 42mm from the 32mm
maximum on the sliders, and also allow it to make parts efficiently in one hit that
wouldn’t have been possible before.
It is all about being able to break up and get rid of the swarf by hitting the component
harder and in a different way, says Fred Moser. With a sliding head your parameters
are limited by the fact that the bar is moving through a bush. If you try and power the
material off you have problems with push back through the bush, but you can drive it
much harder when it is firmly gripped in a chuck. With the Miyano machines you also
get a bigger diameter capability, and their accuracy and repeatability is very good
indeed.
But the added productivity of 24/7 running brings its own problems. After a weekend
of unmanned running we used to have a mountain to climb to clean all the parts we
had made. You don’t want to have people coming in to clean the parts over the
weekend you just want to run the machines unmanned so it used to take us until
Tuesday afternoon to clean the weekends production, says David. We therefore
looked at the market for an alternative approach.
The answer was a fully automatic Amsonic EGAclean 4100 cleaning machine. This
uses isoparaffin to degrease the parts and is almost effluent-free, with all the solvent
recycled. The machine is also fully programmable and can even turn parts over and
apply ultrasonic vibration if there is, say, a requirement to clean out deep holes. The
system is also versatile enough to process parts machined using neat oil on the sliding
head machines at the same time as parts made using soluble oil on the Miyano’s.
We wanted to find a system that did not rely on materials that are being phased out
under the Kyoto agreement and which we wouldn’t be able to use after 2007. It also
had to be easy to use, environmentally friendly and do the job better than it was being
done already. We looked at the market and quickly settled on the Amsonic machine,
says David.
We used to degrease parts by putting them in baskets and dipping them in tanks of
trichloroethylene. Now we’ve got a fully automated, clean, efficient process that can
clean the weekend’s production by Monday afternoon. Our customers get cleaner
products that are environmentally friendly and we get a quicker, cleaner and
controllable process which is much less labour intensive.
Technoturn’s most recent investment has been in an OGP Smart Scope four-axis noncontact
measuring machine to speed up its inspection and measurement procedures.
As David McIlwain explains, this will now be mostly managed from the shop floor.
When the operator has produced the first-off he will put the part in the Smart Scope,
call up the program for that part and know within minutes if the machine is set up
correctly and the part is to the customers drawing. If there is any query he can take a
50x magnification digital photo of the part and email it to the customer to ask if it is
OK.
The parts we are working on today are getting more and more complicated, and so
the time taken to inspect them using the old manual approach is getting longer and
longer with more and more scope for errors. On a complex part the Smart Scope will
inspect the part in a fraction of the time with no chance for errors.
To steal a slogan from BT, its all about working smarter rather than harder, says Fred
Moser That’s good for us, and its got to be good for our customers too.
