Product category:
EDM wire cutting
News Release from: Agie Charmilles | Subject: Charmilles ROBOFIL 440 CleanCut wire EDM
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 21 May 2007
Wire EDM work brought in-house to lower
costs
Instead of subcontracting out wire EDM work, a UK precision engineering company has invested in its own wire-EDM machine to increase the company's cost-competitiveness.
Otley-based precision engineering specialist - Craftsman Tools - has recently invested in a new Charmilles ROBOFIL 440 CleanCut wire EDM machine from GF AgieCharmilles, Coventry, UK The machine was installed in January 2007 and is the first EDM machine Craftsman Tools has purchased in its long and illustrious history
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 10 Aug 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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Prior to making the investment in Charmilles' EDM CleanCut technology - Craftsman Tools used to sub-contract-out its EDM work to specialist EDM machining providers.
Even though the company still makes use of these external arrangements (for additional EDM capacity when the need arises) - the move to establish in-house EDM capability is a strategic move that could well be seen as the tip of the ice-berg.
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Said Robert Johnson, managing director at Craftsman Tools: "We have often considered (virtually every year it seems) whether we could justify the expenditure required to build up an in-house EDM resource.
We made the strategic decision to invest in the autumn of 2006 and we are delighted with the results we are achieving." Not only has Craftsman Tools reduced (significantly) its dependency on external EDM providers (which in itself has also helped the company reduce its lead times, increase cost competitiveness, protect its margins and maintain greater control over its manufacturing operations) - the EDM investment has also given the company additional manufacturing flexibility with jobs that were previously being machined on the company's conventional CNC machine tools, now being machined on the Robofil 440 CleanCut.
Continued Johnson: "There is enormous potential here for the CleanCut machine.
The machine is highly accurate and provides us with exceptional surface finish - so for complex, high-precision component part manufacture it's a real asset.
We're exploring how we can exploit the potential of the machine still further and increase its utilisation." The 440 Cleancut EDM machine is currently being used as a shared manufacturing resource between Craftsman Tools' specialist manufacturing cells.
In total there are five individual and dedicated manufacturing cells within Craftsman Tools' 19,000ft2 facility and the Charmilles EDM machine is being used to manufacture components/parts for three of these cells.
These three cells are as follows.
1 - Delaware Cell - designing and manufacturing specialist workholding equipment and solutions.
2 - Aire Cell - manufacturing sub-contract components/parts mainly for the oil/gas sector.
3 - North Cell - manufacturing specialist parts for the oil sector.
The Robofil 440 CleanCut machine is being used to help manufacture specialist workholding equipment (e g, expanding mandrels and special purpose fixtures, etc).
Prior to the arrival of the 440 CleanCut machine, products such as Craftsman's expanding sleeve type mandrels were milled and hand finished, and therefore required a number of different operations to be performed.
Now, with the CleanCut EDM machine, the number of operations required has been reduced to just one (after heat treatment) - and crucially, the need for hand finishing/polishing has been eliminated altogether.
The situation is similar with Craftsman Tools' specialist sub-contract machining services.
Manufacturing complex, high-precision and performance-critical parts (prototypes and one-offs through to medium/large volume production), Craftsman Tools operates within a number of high added value sectors - oil/gas, automotive, power engineering etc.
Components, such as those for the oil/gas sector (seals, rings, valves etc), are manufactured from a diverse range of materials (stainless and duplex steels, Inconels, hardened steels, titanium, plastics, 'exotics') - and exhibit complex forms and profiles such as thin walls, deep ribs - with tolerances of 10 micron or better often required.
The 440 CleanCut machine, with its fixed table, polymer concrete frame, closed wire guides (for guaranteed positional accuracy) and linear scales provides reliable and repeatable accuracy - vital when handling high-precision work.
Other features of the 440 CleanCut machine, e g, 30 deg taper cut capability on workpieces up to 400mm thickness, an automatic wire threading system and automatic detection of a missing threading hole, increase the capability, capacity and flexibility of the machine.
Concluded Johnson: "The 440 CleanCut machine is at the heart of our manufacturing operations.
It provides us with exceptional cutting performance, accuracy and surface finish - and has enabled us to reduce machining operations and (as a consequence) time and resources spent on job set-ups.
Because we can leave the machine to run unattended overnight we benefit from increased productivity too.".
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