Third Schneeberger tool and cutter grinder added

Adding on its third Scheeberger tool and cutter grinder, Scorpion Tooling said its Quinto software's e-grind feature enables production of more complex tooling and reduces programming time.

Stroud, UK-based Scorpion Tooling UK has resolved design and production 'bottlenecks' by installing its third Schneeberger tool and cutter grinder.

Some 70% of Scorpion's work is for customised tooling.

Before designing a tool, customer machining processes and tool protocols are evaluated in order to create a tool which delivers an optimised machining process.

Offering such a service, said Scorpion, puts pressure on its design capability as well as its manufacturing facilities.

After considering various alternatives, Scorpion chose another Schneeberger tool and cutter grinder because of the design/manufacturing capability it offered.

Founder of Scorpion Tooling UK, Chris Wands said: "We see ourselves as fighting 'other people's fires' with the combination of design with manufacturing capability.

We aim for a long-term partnership with our suppliers and our customers so that together we can deliver the ideal tool for a job".

He continued: "We try to help the customer make the best decision, even experimenting with coatings as well as tool geometry to obtain the optimum performance of a tool in a specific application".

* Powerful software - Wands said that the 'key' to achieving consistently exceptional tool performance has been combining ingenious tool design with good quality materials and versatile machine tools.

He explained: "We were up to capacity on our design capability and need to create more design time.

The most efficient way to do this was to utilise the powerful Schneeberger software as the 'power-house' of our design department, because it gives such easy programming of even complex tools".

Wands added: "Additionally, of course, it allows us to convert the drawing into a tool easily".

Wands said that the design capability of the Quinto software, particularly the e- grind feature, allowed Scorpion to produce even more complex tooling and it reduced programming time significantly.

It also made a significant difference to the development, for example, of extra long and high speed tools with different helixes, etc.

Wands said: "Our experience of the machines we already have, and through them of Schneeberger itself, was such that installing a third machine from the company was the safe, as well as the obvious, choice".

* Special, complex tooling - The tool, said Wands, makes a far more significant contribution to profitability that many people realise.

Often a special tool can deliver a far better machine performance that standard tools.

For example, Scorpion recently designed and manufactured a tool which replaced five standard tools.

In another example, the company modified the geometry of a standard tool slightly and, using a different coating, quadrupled the number of components machined by the one tool.

* About Scorpion Tooling UK - founded in 1990 by Chris Wands to manufacture standard tools for the local engineering industry, 70% of turnover is now application-specific tools designed and manufactured for customers which include many of the leading automotive OEMs and Tier I manufacturers, F1, aerospace, medical manufacturing, precision and general engineering companies throughout the UK.

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