Happy Haldex harps back to Heller

When Haldex, manufacturer of automotive braking systems, reorganised, it went back to Heller, whose horizontal machining centres it had been using since the mid-1990s.

Service, working in partnership with customers, doing everything possible to assist the customer in keeping his customer happy.

All cliches perhaps, but that is the essence of Heller, says MD Geoff Lloyd.

Heller's claims are easily substantiated by the work it has done and is doing now for customers - the simultaneous engineering it undertook with Triumph Motorcycles for the development of the new Rocket III engine, the manufacture of pre-production parts at its Redditch site for both Cosworth Technology and Dana TTE.

After purchasing two machines from Heller, Steve Roberts, Blade Shop Manager at Siemens Power Generation plant in Newcastle upon Tyne, said "Heller's willingness to work with us to obtain the end result was impressive.

We felt that the company was not just looking for a machine sale but wanted to assist customer achieve his objectives.

They have been one of the best companies we have ever dealt with".

It is this attitude which drew Haldex, manufacturers of automotive braking systems, back to Heller when it undertook a major reorganisation of its world-wide manufacturing base.

Haldex had been operating four Heller BEA 7 horizontal machining centres, all purchased in the mid-nineties.

No longer needed for the plant in the UK, the company wished to transfer two of the machines to Brazil and the remaining two to India as part of its market-development programme.

The machines needed de-commissioning and re-commissioning in the new plants.

In addition new fixtures had to be designed and manufactured.

Machining is high-accuracy heavy milling and boring on the main wheel bores for both the worm and the corresponding worm shaft bore together with milling the main faces, so the fixture and clamping arrangement must be capable of withstanding high cutting forces.

Heller developed a tombstone-style fixture with a range of modular steadies designed to suit each of the tail variants and which allows two components to be completed in each machine cycle.

Four components are mounted onto the fixture, two for first operation and two for the second operation, completing two components per pallet load.

For the first pass, which mills the worm wheel clearance, the part is located by the cast worm bore using a conical hydraulic ram.

The ram is located and compensates automatically to take up any variation in the casting.

For the second pass, which bores the worm wheel bore, the component is located on a mandrel which locates in the machined bore.

Geoff Lloyd said "Haldex sought our help because they were confident of our abilities all aspects of engineering solutions.

We pride ourselves on offering a second-to-none service to our customers, and once again we have won business because of that service".

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