TOOLING TRACK RECORD & FOCUS UNDERPIN CONTINUING SUCCESS
Above: An Inconel machining demonstration on the company’s new
Spinner 5-axis machining centre. The sparks fl ew when one of the
company’s new ceramic cutters was put to work (inset)
was procured by the company, a Rollomatic
(AGS, https://is.gd/noxulu).
But in the early 1990s, just as Steve
Morancy succeeded his father as president,
the bottom fell out of the circuit board
tooling business as major producers of
board products started to move production
offshore, with local tooling suppliers
undercutting MA Ford. Company reinvention
number three ensued, which saw a
“tremendous broadening” of product, Hill
underlines. In 2000, a custom tool operation
was established to drive development of
high performance products, working directly
with customers to solve their challenges.
“Out of that effort, 60% of our product today
has been developed by that group since
2000, including some of our leading
products, resulting from the group working
with key customers,” the CEO adds.
One of those is its range of Tuffcut XR
end-mills with variable helix and pitch, the
177 series – “one of the core products in
the company today”. The innovation was
actually rooted in 1986, but not fully
realised till later. Just after 2000, a joint
venture operation with Mitsubishi Materials
Corporation (MMC) gave MA Ford access to
MMC’s patented coatings, with that joint
venture operation and exclusive access to
coatings technology continuing today (Altima
coatings), with other coatings also
employed. These are variously applied to the
best available carbide substrates that have
the company’s innovative
cutting geometries ground
into them (the company is
not a large enough player to
produce its own carbide
substrates, but independently and
continually veri es third-party rods).
A further tooling innovation saw the
company the rst to add a seven- ute endmill
to its standard catalogue range some
eight years ago, says Ward, with the latest
development now being the nine- ute 380
series XT-9 end-mill, described as a “gamechanger
for Inconel machining” by the UK
managing director.
The UK operation was rst set up in
1998, in Derby, moved to its previous Derby
location in 2008, with the June celebration
event taking place at the company’s new
and larger site in the same city. At more
than 8,000 m2, the two-storey facility is
almost four times the size of the previous
site, with warehousing and storage almost
three-times the size at around 370 m2 –
100,000 different part numbers are held in
stock, a value of £1.5 million of nished
stock and £2.5 million in total; there’s also
£200,000 of stock within distribution.
Same-day dispatch operates for orders
received up to 17:00 UK time, too.
In between 2008 and the latest move
was the acquisition in 2012 of Leeds-based
cutting tool manufacturer Ashton Tools,
which is today the UK operation that
manufactures specials, undertakes
regrinding and, increasingly, produces
standard products. Now called MA Ford
Custom Tools, it is dedicated to MA Ford
tooling, supporting the UK and Europe.
It already manufactures 50% of the endmill
portfolio for the UK and Europe; the
Tuffcut 278 end-mill range has just been
added, while the 277 Tuffcut end-mill range
is completely manufactured in the UK (cutter
sizes in the UK generally being 1-25 mm
diameter; USA 0.127 to 32 mm).
On custom tools speci cally, these
represent between 20-25% of MA Ford
Europe’s business (globally it’s
20%). Fast response to
customer requirements is
MA Ford Custom Tools’
forte, with willingness to
satisfy small batch
requirements another.
For both UK sites, longservice
employees are a
feature, with Ward
underlining this as a part of
the operations’ strength –
apprentices are being trained at Leeds
to add to the workforce, too.
CONSULTANTS; NOT SALESMEN
Rather than a sales operation, today the UK
managing director sees the company more
as a consultancy, with that switch originally
spurred by the performance of a Tuffcut 177
XR tool used at a Haas Automation Open
House some many years back. Programmed
with OneCNC CAM (https://is.gd/idalum),
a 12 mm diameter cutter was run at 1xD
depth of cut, 30% step-over, 10,000 rpm
and 10 m/min feed rate in EN8. “That just
changed everything for the way we went to
market; to teach and educate our
customers. We talk more now about strategy
than we do about the tools themselves.
Others have been talking about consultancy
for two to three years, we’ve been teaching
our customers to high speed machine for 10
years,” Ward con rms, adding: “It’s the
whole package; the tooling, the way we
apply it, the way we recommend holding it,
which is so important – I don’t hear enough
people talk about that.”
This approach is today supported by
in-house expertise with both OneCNC CAM
(https://is.gd/idalum) and, for high speed
28 August 2019 www.machinery.co.uk @MachineryTweets
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