Turning centres raise subcontractor confidence

Having turning centres, which could exceed an automotive subcontractor's current productivity and quality levels improved its confidence to meet customer deadlines and demands.

It is essential that automotive suppliers continually create efficiency improvements and to do this, LIC Components of Coventry, UK, bought four CNC turning centres to enhance its position.

Previously part of the UK's Lucas Group before being acquired by Currie and Warner, LIC acquired the turning centres from Leader CNC of Nuneaton.

Financier Accelerate provided grant aid for the purchase of the four machine tools.

LIC production manager, Ray James said: "This level of capital expenditure would not have been possible without Government support that has helped us pay for the machines and the relevant training.

Now we have the machines our business can continue to move forward".

The 74 employee company produces automotive, fluid power and hydraulic parts produced primarily from bar, as well as from castings, forgings and billets in bright drawn steels, brass and aluminium.

LIC needed a series of turning centres that delivered rigidity, accuracy and the ability to reduce production times.

LIC reviewed the market and selected the DMC range of turning centres.

The company purchased the DMC 8S and 10S turning centres with an 8in and 10in hollow chuck and maximum diameter range of 240mm and 350mm respectively.

The other two acquisitions, the DMC 6TL and 8TL are built upon a single body casting with high rigidity.

The machines feature a high speed and powerful turret for extremely productive machining, said Leader.

All four machines delivered in January 2008 ihave 12 tool station turrets, swarf conveyors and part catchers.

James said: "The machine tools the DMCs replaced were high specification turning centres, and in one case the DMC replaced a twin turret machine.

Despite replacing twin turret machines, the DMCs have still proven more efficient and productive than their predecessors" He continued: "We knew that to be competitive we needed to improve our technology and skill levels and our previous machine tools were not fast enough to compete with modern CNC production.

This meant we were losing projects to competitors on downtime and productivity times - this is no longer the case".

* Cycle times improved by 2--55% - the DMC 8S has improved cycle times by 20-55% when compared with the previous twin turret machine.

The improvements involve a family of up to 15 different types of turned product in the 60 to 90mm diameter range.

The DMC 8S is also committed to machining a series of hose nipples and fittings that have noted similar productivity gains.

LIC has found the new 8S to have improved efficiency from 60% to over 80% by reducing non cutting time to an absolute minimum.

This is in addition to the improved changeover times, flexibility and the significantly higher speeds and feeds on the 8S.

* Bar pullers - the DMC 6TL and 8TL turning centres consist of bar pullers that see the machines produce a family of up to 20 stainless steel cable fittings in batches up to 5000.

Producing larger batch sizes, the 6TL and 8TL are achieving efficiency values between 88 and 94% in comparison with 70 to 75% previously obtained by the older turning centres.

With a facility that operates up to 21h on day and night shifts, efficiency improvements of up to 20% have proven a major benefit to LIC.

The smaller fittings demand exceptional accuracy levels and it is for this reason the parts are produced on the 6TL and 8TL machines with linear guideways.

* Intermittent cutting - the DMC 10S is the largest and most rigid of the four machines and it has been specifically employed to perform intermittent machining of square/hexagonal steel bar.

Producing hydraulic fittings and nipples, the 10S has a 22kW motor that delivers high torque at low rev/min to guarantee exceptional productivity levels with high quality surface finishes within the 10 micron tolerance range.

This chucking machine productivity levels are 30 to 40% more than that of its predecessor, said Leader.

James said: "We supply a large percentage of our customers on a JIT basis or on a regularly scheduled delivery system.

Having machines that can exceed our current productivity and quality levels has given us additional capacity and improved our confidence in our ability to meet customer deadlines and demands.

The one element that played a major factor in the DMC acquisitions is the after sales and spare parts service provided by Leader CNC".

He continued: "Renowned as a company that provides exceptional support and being based only 30 minutes away from us, we know that if we ever encounter problems an engineer will be with us immediately".

James concluded: "This gives us great confidence in our new acquisitions.".

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