Product category:
Vertical machining centres (VMC)
News Release from: C Dugard | Subject: Eagle 1000 4-axis vertical machining centre
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 12 December 2005
Four-axis VMC helped win orders
Four-axis VMC helped supplier win a contract to produce prototype engine manifolds for Ferrari sports cars and led a UK supplier's eight skilled people into batch production.
Winning a contract to produce prototype engine manifolds for Ferrari sports cars led Gerald Underwood's company of eight highly skilled people in Portchester, Hampshire into batch production for the Italian specialist car builder, with the components now being machined on a Dugard Eagle 1000 vertical machining centre fitted with a fourth-axis unit Underwood Precision certainly has the advantage of being able to cope with diversity, and managing director Gerald Underwood even takes his turn to operate the machines, discuss production methods in detail and makes up tooling for a wide range of unusual applications for a dedicated customer base
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 26 Jan 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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Around the machine shop at the Portchester Trading Estate are parts and final assemblies for marine and aviation safety products, special cooling ducts for Type 45 destroyers, truck parts due for delivery to Scandinavia and breathing apparatus for the US Marine Corps.
Underwood does not give the impression of a typical owner of a subcontract machining operation and the history of his working life soon reveals senior engineering 'boffin' experiences from research and development involving laser optics and the development of methods for final polishing of contact lenses.
Indeed, this pedigree has been the foundation of many high-tech contracts such as the machining of high tolerance panels for the Navy.
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An "amazing response" was given at MACH 2002 to the UK launch of CNC machines offering production times that are significantly faster than current machines, but costing less than GBP 50,000!
Underwood Precision took on the work to machine perfectly flat, unblemished surfaces on both sides of aluminium plates some 40mm thick and 610mm by 390mm that previous suppliers had never been able to achieve.
Even with the effort of spending at least 45 minutes a side for final lapping of the surface, other companies could not solve surface imperfections around holes machined on the plate surface.
Needless to say, Underwood's experience enabled these to be engineered out! He devised a flycutter (held in the spindle of the Dugard Eagle 1000) to carry a 'specially modified' gem quality diamond to finish diamond mill the surface.
The final diamond milling operation to remove a stock level of between 0.2 to 0.3mm, is carried out in a single pass on the Dugard Eagle following the drilling and machining of the various features on the plate and rough and semi-finish face milling.
Such operations explain why Underwood is very complimentary about the Eagle 1000 that was installed in early 2004 by C Dugard of Hove in Sussex, UK.
He says: "We scoured the market for a suitable machine and found the Eagle combined the torque, cutting speed and machining envelope we needed and it fell within our budget." The Eagle 1000 has an X-axis stroke of 1000 mm, 520mm in Y and 510mm in Z and a table of 1000 mm by 510mm.
It has Fanuc control and a 24-station tool magazine with twin-arm changer.
Underwood Precision was naturally concerned over build quality, back up and support for any machine it bought, to which Underwood adds: "We were offered so many machine deals, but when you look at the type of work we are producing today we are positive our decision was exactly right and we are getting a good payback from the investment." He also comments that with Dugard's Hove headquarters just along the coast, this means any help required is readily at hand - "A very important influence in our decision to buy," he says.
Underwood Precision moved into its subcontract machining operation in 1994 after taking over the work of a customer that decided to move out of the market.
With a shop full of manual machines and three people, it operated out of a shed in an old ship yard.
Underwood adds: "I still look back fondly to those days and reckon they were the best of my life." Eight years ago the first CNC machines were installed and work comes through the door that other companies seem either not to have a clue how to machine or, as Underwood thinks now: "Probably could not be bothered to face the aggravation." It was 1998 that the prototype manifold machining for Ferrari started, leading to batchwork and from then, new work has progressively filtered into the business.
From machining difficult parts in recent years the company has expanded into providing an added-value assembly service for the parts that have been machined, such as heavy duty release hooks for life rafts that go to various navies around the globe including India, Pakistan, New Zealand and Australia.
The company also produces components for inflation systems and escape chutes, parachute activation, power control devices, and special housings for carrying and protecting very delicate electronic components.
While a lot of aluminium is machined, Underwood Precision is also machining components in very difficult 316 and Duplex stainless steels, which again reflect Underwood's comments about the benefits of the Eagle 1000's torque and speed.
The work tends to be organised to bring together fourth axis cycles and the machining of up to four sides of a part in a single setting.
There is a considerable number of left hand and right hand parts, for instance, which tend to be grouped whenever possible and this batching reduces the number of times the fourth-axis unit is removed to give access to the whole machine table area for large or multiple loadings of parts.
Programming is carried out at the Fanuc O-MD control as well as off-line, according to complexity and setter workload.
Cycle times vary from 90 minutes for a part that covers the whole machine table area down to small part milling at just over one minute a piece.
Tolerances of 0.1mm are common for position and size and fairly typical is the surface finish requirement that can be down to 0.4 microns.
The Eagle 1000 is due to for a move in the near future at the Porchester site as Underwood is in the process of extending and re-organising the machine shop into individual turning and milling machining sections with a separate area dedicated to fitting and final assembly. Request a free brochure from C Dugard ...
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