TURNING MACHINISTS GO ROUND IN CIRCLES MORE EFFICIENTLY
Roundly
praised
Conduit fi ttings manufacture
cycle times slashed with Miyano,
but more to come; start-up
subcontractor gets off to fl ying
start with easy-to-program XYZ
Machine Tools’ technology;
industry & product news in brief
ABB Cable Management Product,
Coleshill, has made a fundamental
change to the way it turn-mills the
cable end ttings it manufactures, following
the installation in January of a xed-head
Miyano BNE51-MSY twin-spindle, twin-turret
turning centre supplied by Citizen Machinery
UK (https://is.gd/silefi ).
Cycle time savings of up to 70% (with
more to come), reductions in manufacturing
cost, scrap and returns, plus elimination of
the need to outsource 10% of production will
combine to deliver payback within 18
months for the 51 mm bar capacity
machine. Manufacturing unit manager
Andrew Fellows describes this as “brilliant”.
Every week, 100,000 m of exible metal
conduit and 65,000 m of nylon conduit are
supplied, predominantly to the automotive,
rail and mining industries across Europe,
the Middle East, China and Australia, while
some are destined for installation in the
parent group’s robot systems. So there is
high demand for the mainly brass ttings,
plus some stainless steel, aluminium and
plastic varieties, required at both ends of
every length of conduit.
Parts needed in large volumes are
produced in house on six cam-type multispindle
autos, while the shorter runs are
completed on four single-spindle, singleturret
CNC lathes and now the Miyano
ABB Cable Management Product
is slashing cycle times with its
Miyano BNE51-MSY
twin-spindle, twin-turret turning centre, which
replaced a similarly speci ed, ageing model
on which one of the turrets was defective.
Comparing the performance of the latter
two lathes, Fellows states: “In the rst two
weeks of the Miyano arriving we transferred
onto the new machine the manufacture of
four fast-moving products, all of which
bene tted from drilling on both end faces
simultaneously at the main and counter-
spindles.
“Average cycle time saving was 59%. The
largest reduction was 70% in the case of a
tting that previously required 133 seconds
to produce. The turn-mill cycle now takes 40
seconds to complete on the Miyano.”
SUPERIMPOSED SAVINGS
Senior operator Dan Gardner adds: “We
have only taken advantage so far of cutting
with two tools at a time, but the
superimposition function in the Mitsubishi
M730VS control, coupled with Y-axis
movement of the upper turret plus X-axis
travel of the counter-spindle, allows three
tools to be in cut at the same time.
“After ve days’ training from Citizen,
both on- and off-site, we carried out a time
study on a complex tting that will see an
80% reduction in cycle time from 230 to 46
seconds.”
According to Fellows, selection of the
Citizen Miyano BNE51-MSY was down to the
capital cost being 30 to 40% less than two
alternatives considered by ABB Cable
Management Product, in line with company
policy. Lead-time from order to delivery was
also the shortest, at just 12 weeks.
From a well-established operation to a
subcontracting start-up. After 15 years of
working in the subcontract machining
environment, Michael Thompson decided
that it was time for a change. Speaking with
his now fellow directors Martin Stokoe and
Stephen Hornby, they all wanted to run their
own engineering business. The trio sat back
and planned, putting the feelers out to
identify business opportunities and, almost
12 months later, created Newcastle-based
Expert Precision Engineering.
Says Thompson: “We knew we were
making the right decision, given the skills
set that we had with myself and Martin
having extensive machining experience,
which was supplemented by Stephen’s
extensive knowledge of quality and
production management. From the outset,
we knew we would be involved in the
42 August 2019 www.machinery.co.uk @MachineryTweets
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