Gear maker's greater efficiency with lathe and CNC

High quality finished gears and other turned components, enhanced efficiency and production speeds are some of the benefits being derived by Apple Rochester Gears, of Wellingborough.

High quality finished gears and other turned components, enhanced efficiency and production speeds are some of the benefits being derived by Apple Rochester Gears, of Wellingborough.

In addition, the specialist gear manufacturer is also enjoying the ability to produce precision one-offs and low-sized to medium-sized batches since it recently acquired its third Harrison Alpha lathe - a 1400U manual and CNC machine, to complement its Alpha 550 and Alpha 330 lathes.

The company, which is a division of Transpower Drives, produces a wide range of bespoke gears for industrial machinery applications notably in the printing, paper-making, food and other sectors.

Spur gears, helical gears, bevel gears, worm and wormwheels, rack and pinions, sprockets and timing pulleys are just some of the OEM and replacement parts regularly specified by Apple Rochester's customers.

Increasingly, the Northamptonshire company is also asked to supply engineered items for specialist applications, including high performance parts for the motorsports industry based at Silverstone and other nearby locations.

It was also recently approached to machine a new control column for the restoration of a vintage World War II aircraft and has assisted engineering teams which were building robots to enter TV-inspired 'Robot Wars' contests.

The Alpha 1400U has had most impact, however, on improving Apple Rochester Gears' performance in its core business areas - gear cutting and turning for machine parts.

"It has definitely enhanced our capability and made a real difference not only to the quality of our finished turned items, but also made our operation much quicker.

A real benefit is that if one of our customers has a breakdown on a machine, we can get them out of trouble fast," said Cliff Linnitt, engineering manager of Apple Rochester Gears.

"When the business started we only had manual centre lathes but one of the disadvantages is that if you need to turn more than one part, the second one can take as long as the first and the precision is not so good.

For small work and repeat parts we decided that we needed to invest in an Alpha machine.

They are much faster and excellent for repeatability.

The more intricate the part, the more suited it is to the Alpha, so for things like tapers and threads we would always use these lathes," he added.

He said that the great advantage of the Alpha 1400U lathe is that it is ideally suited to turning larger batches.

While the company's other Alpha machines are good for small quantities, it has has been able to take on larger orders for quantities of 50-off items or more.

That capability is enhanced by the fact that the lathe has an indexing head tool-changer for complex turning operations which use many different tools.

The Alpha 1400U lathe and the company's other two lathes were supplied to Apple Rochester Gears, which specialises in milling, boring and keying operations as well as turning, by Harrison's main regional distributor, DRMT( Leicester).

David Smith, sales director of Harrison Lathes, said: "Harrison is delighted and proud that these three Alpha lathes have enabled Apple Rochester Gears to achieve success over many years and we are confident that their decision to invest in their Alpha 1400U will continue to open up new business opportunities.

In the present ever-changing marketplace, engineering companies need to be able to meet - or even exceed - their customers' demands for highly accurate turned parts produced in double-quick time and equally for high quality repeatability.

This Alpha 1400U top-of-the-range lathe has been designed and built to Harrison's world-famous standards for reliability, strength and quality to achieve those exacting standards.".

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