Hopwood Gears’ operations director Calum
Baines using the Makino U6 H.E.A.T
three-machine package from NCMT ( www.
is.gd/waoZPs ). In the last two years, turnover
has doubled to £4 million, pressing the
need for machine tool investment.
The family-run rm derives half of its
turnover from the manufacture of steel,
aluminium and plastic gears and the
remainder from high precision subcontract
work, particularly for the robotics and
defence sectors.
In order to meet demand, Hopwood
Gears has invested in a trio of Japanesemade
machines. One is a Makino U6
H.E.A.T. wire EDM machine capable of long
periods of unattended running, and the other
two are from Okuma, a twin-spindle Genos
L300-MYW CNC turn-mill centre and a Genos
M560-V-e VMC.
The latest additions bring the company’s
tally of 4-axis VMCs to six, while there are
now eight CNC lathes and two wire EDM
machines on site. It also operates a raft of
other CNC and manual machine tools,
including a horizontal machining centre,
water jet cutters, hobbers, rack cutters,
broaches and grinders - a total of more than
100 in all.
The shortfall in production capacity lay in
the prismatic machining of general
subcontract parts, which is the remit of the
one hit, mostly occupying the
Genos lathe. The Makino is
employed for 90 per cent of its
time in gear production, mainly
for wire-cutting keyways in
hardened steel.
The VMC was supplied as
“We need our
machine tools to
make money so
they have to run
continuously”
standard with a 22 kW /15,000 rpm /
200 Nm face-and-taper contact, throughcoolant
spindle, whereas normally such a
speci cation would cost extra. It helps to
deliver the high productivity that Hopwood
Gears demands, as do cutting feed rates of
up to 32 m/min.
Hopwood Gears’ managing director Cory
Hopwood says: “We need our machine tools
to make money so they have to run
continuously. We therefore place great
importance on machine reliability and aftersales
back-up.
“As a result of our rapid growth, there
was a shortfall of milling, turning and EDM
capacity and we were constantly running
behind with orders, but that situation has
changed dramatically.”
He adds the Makino U6 H.E.A.T. is 30
per cent quicker at cutting than the other
EDM machine on-site and uses 30 per cent
less wire. It is due to a combination of
machine rigidity and the two large, highpressure
ushing pumps that are able to
evacuate chips ef ciently, allowing the wire
to be pushed harder.
Favourable features of the Genos L300-
MYW CNC lathe were the 15 kW / 570 Nm
spindle, hand-scraped box ways, Y-axis
travel of the turret and the provision of 12
driven tool stations, permitting one-hit
production of complex components to
reduce production cost and lead-times. The
Genos M560-V-e VMC on the shop- oor in
Oldham has a compact footprint of less than
eight square metres.
ACCURACY AND REPEATABILITY
Rapid Design Manufacturing Solutions
(RDMS), a manufacturer of plastic
injection production and rapid
mould tools, has taken
delivery of a second pair of
high precision and speed,
3-axis, VMCs from German
manufacturer, Roeders
(pictured on page 25),
supplied to the toolmaker’s
Oldham factory by sole UK
agent Hurco Europe (
www.
) – to help it cope
is.gd/Qf2Zn1
with an increasing order book and reinstate
ultra-high milling accuracy.
RDMS works closely with its customers
to provide high-end, multi-cavity tools to a
maximum of two tonnes in weight in short
lead-times for producing the most exacting
plastic components. Some of the more
challenging applications involve in-mould
labelling and multi-shot tool production.
Established in 1998 and run by coowners
Neil Richardson and Paul Ryan,
medical work features signi cantly, including
providing assistance to suppliers of hospital
and laboratory equipment in the Covid-19
pandemic. In addition, the rm manufactures
injection moulds for producing interior trim
for the likes of Mercedes, BMW, Audi, and
Porsche cars. The white goods and
electronics sectors are also regular
recipients of the company’s tools.
A particular specialism is the machining
of two-shot tooling, used to produce complex
parts from two different materials, without
the need for assembly, by overmoulding
plastic around a preformed plastic or metal
insert, often in high volumes. Extreme
accuracy and repeatability of machining is
required when producing this type of tool
and RDMS says that is why it selected
Roeders machining centres.
“We need to hold tolerances of less than
10 microns on nearly every tool we produce
and these German high-speed machines have
always allowed us to do that,” explains Ryan.
Genos VMC, and in turn-milling of gears in
Demand from the nuclear sector was the
catalyst for investment by Burcas Ltd in
a Doosan Mynx 9500/50 large capacity
vertical machining centre from Mills CNC
24 February 2021 | www.machinery.co.uk | MachineryMagazine | @MachineryTweets
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