Product category:
Vertical machining centres (VMC)
News Release from: 600 Centre | Subject: Richmond VMC 600 vertical machining centre
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 17 November 2004
VMC demolishes lead times and costs
Hunting for the best price:performance deal on a VMC, a safety lamp maker selected a machine that has reduced lead-time from days to a matter of hours and cut piece part costs by more than half.
After hunting down the best deal of performance against price it could find on the market for a vertical machining centre, Wolf Safety Lamp Company, a Sheffield-based OEM, is using its newly installed Richmond VMC 600 from 600 Centre of Shepshed to reduce machining time by almost a third, cut lead-time from days to a matter of hours and slash piece part cost by more than half From July 2003, all equipment intended for use in potentially explosive atmospheres, such as the market leading range of lamps manufactured by Wolf Safety Lamp, had to comply with the latest EC ATEX Directive
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 17 Mar 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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Taking the opportunity to accommodate the minor design changes required, Wolf also decided to make wholesale changes to its Turbolite high power, compressed air driven lamp.
For some number of years the housings for these units had been manufactured only from brass castings but it was decided the weight of the structure should be reduced and so changed the design to utilise heat treated aluminium alloy castings as an alternative.
Explains works manager Ted Brooker: "There are always other factors that have to be considered and to machine aluminium, faster spindle speeds are required with better deployment of coolant than we could achieve with our existing machine tools.
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This led us to research the market for a vertical machining centre supplier, and invited four vendors to offer their best package.
It was the overall deal that 600 Centre could provide for the Richmond VMC 600 that was unbeatable, incorporating the specification, the availability - virtually ex-stock, the application support, back-up and the five-year warranty/breakdown cover.
It really made our choice easy!" When Wolf Safety Lamp's engineers compared specifications, the Richmond came with a 20-tool magazine, compared with the competitions? 16-tool versions and this extra capacity was ideal due to the more complex machining cycles involving multiple set-ups of components on the new aluminium lamp.
Adds Brooker: "Coolant deployment was also important for the machining cycles we were using so the Richmond feature of wrap-around coolant with six adjustable ports delivering over 30 litres/min was again ideal and not available elsewhere." Wolf Safety Lamp is privately owned, employs 30 people and has more than a century of trading history, being set up in the early 1900s to service the booming coal mining industry.
Following the decline of this sector during the 1980s it switched its business strategy to focus on mainly the marine and industrial sector which now accounts for 90 per cent of its Pounds Sterling 3.5 million sales.
With exports contributing around 60 per cent of the business the company now controls almost 90 per cent of the international market for air lamps.
Its portable lamps are also widely used in structural engineering, pipeline, storage tank and vessel inspection as well as coating, cleaning and shotblasting areas for the oil, gas, petrochemical and shipyard industries.
The compressed air driven lamp unit provides a safer alternative to mains and low voltage lighting where potentially explosive atmospheres could present a serious risk.
The new Atex Turbolite aluminium alloy lamps are now available in two models, the A-TL44A Bay Light which is a general-purpose version and the A-TL45A Floodlight which has a wide angle diffused beam.
The Turbolite is powered, purged, pressurised and cooled by compressed air controlled by an internal regulator.
As air passes through the lamp head it propels a turbine wheel by means of three nozzle plates.
In turn, the turbine drives a magnetic rotor within the windings, generating a 24V AC electrical supply to power the 250W halogen bulb.
The growing popularity of these innovative lamps means that air-driven units now make up 25 per cent of sales.
Making the most of the Richmond VMC's generous 750mm by 510mm worktable, production is able to permanently fixture three generator housings at a time on the machine.
Station one makes use of a standard machine vice to hold a fixture that locates the first casting to allow the machining of internal features.
At station two, a fixture mounted directly on the machine's worktable enables the topside of the component to be produced, while the third casting is mounted on a fourth axis rotary table giving a side-on presentation of the part.
One of the appealing features to Wolf Safety Lamp of the Richmond VMC 600 machine was that its capacities were greater than normally available for a vertical machining centre of this type.
It has 40mm diameter laser calibrated ballscrews, a 560mm Y-axis and Z-axis, a 600mm X-axis and a large 625mm throat.
The table load capacity is 700kg due to the extra ribbing in the cast Meehanite machine structure which also helps to maintain the positioning accuracy of +/-0.005mm and repeatability of 0.0025mm.
The machine's Fanuc 0i-MB control offers cutter compensation, three-axis interpolation and a 400 tool offset capability with extensive canned cycles such as rigid tapping, helical interpolation and pocket milling.
"The application is working exceptionally well," says Brooker.
"We machine the housings in batches of 100, which used to take several weeks to complete.
Now, we set up in the morning and can have a part at the plating shop ready for nickel-plating by lunchtime.
The parts are more consistent and we have been able to reduce our machining time by at least 30 per cent." In addition, the company has been able to raise its profitability.
Says Ted Brooker: "It's a competitive market and it's important for us to invest in the latest technology to gain an advantage." He explains how the commissioning and training periods went without a hitch enabling the machine to be run constantly every day, working more or less at maximum speeds.
"It's been an excellent purchase for us.
In my opinion its price/performance ratio can't be beaten and it has definitely helped us move further ahead of our competitors," he says.
As Brooker sums up: "We feel we have scored heavily by purchasing the Richmond.
For an initial period before we had the VMC 600, we subcontracted machining of the Turbolite housings to a local machine shop.
We searched everywhere for a competitive price which was almost four times what we can now produce them for here and of course now production is under our own control.".
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