Hotchkiss evaluated the Colchester Combi 6000 from the Colchestersales (UK) Southern Technical Centre at RK International in Erith, Kent, to represent the best return on investment.
The Hotchkiss family has been associated with engineering since at least 1799 when John, a Royal Navy Lieutenant invented a mechanism for lifting heavy weights and ships anchors. Indeed, it was a modification of his development that is said to have helped the British fleet to outgun the opposition at the Battle of Trafalgar because it enabled cannon balls to be transported far quicker and easier to the gundecks. Today, the family owned Hotchkiss Group, located at West Kingsdown, a stones throw from the Brands Hatch race circuit in Kent, is a specialist heavy machine workshop and general engineering business.
The Group is split into two operations.
John Hotchkiss Engineering named after the current managing director Bill Hotchkiss' father, is still well known for developing, producing, re-engineering and refurbishing rolls largely for the paper industry but also applies its diverse skills to the cable making sector, mining, shipping, car breaking and food producers.
The heavy duty operations of the business would not normally be expected in the Kent countryside - perhaps more at home in the Midlands or North East, but the skills in the business are very specialised for the 23 people operation.
A further 40 are also employed 20 miles away in Strood at the Group's contract engineering operation, Westwell Developments, which undertakes refurbishment, rebuilding and resiting of plant and machinery.
These projects range from fragmentisers used in scrap metal reclamation weighting up to 40 tonnes each, to pump transmissions for a wide range of industries.
The nature of the business is obvious when viewing the West Kingsdown machine shop where craneage can manoeuvre rolls and fabrications weighing up to 60 tonnes.
Its largest lathe has 2.6 m swing by 11.2 m between centres, two other lathes have 12 m and 8.5 m between centre dimensions but by clever siting of beds these machines can form a single unit, with a massive 20 m between centres capacity.
A 17 m long roll grinder has a 1.6 m swing by 10 m between centres and a CNC mill a 6 m by 8 m table.
It was, however, the demand for higher precision and productivity on smaller shaft and chucking work for refurbishing and general turning that recently set Bill Hotchkiss's workshop team to look across the market for a CNC lathe to replace an ageing centre lathe.
They eventually evaluated the Colchester Combi 6000 from the Colchestersales (UK) Southern Technical Centre at RK International in Erith, Kent, to represent the best return on investment.
In particular, it was the machines credentials as a combination lathe able to perform one-off tasks, have very easy to use programming assist and its ability to faithfully reproduce further components when required under automatic cycle that scored highly in the evaluation.
Says Bill Hotchkiss: 'We are engineers and are constantly involved with quite complicated mechanisms and structures.
While we tend to 'engineer' solutions on a large scale, we require high levels of flexibility in our machining because we never know what is going to come through the door.
Our equipment has to be real work horses so top of the agenda for any lathe we were going to install was real fitness for purpose.' The Hotchkiss family definitely has engineering in the genes.
In 1872 Benjamin Berkley Hotchkiss, credited by Bill as probably the most famous of them all, invented the revolving-barrel machine gun and a magazine rifle that became widely used in British, French and American Military.
Later he turned his talents to designing engines, particularly the internal combustion engine, founded the company that produced the famous Hotchkiss car in 1903 and is now sought after by enthusiasts around the world.
In 1930 Donald Hotchkiss, a ship's architect invented the coned propeller used by tugboats for manoeuvring ships in harbour and Bill's father John, who started the current company in 1938 with just £75, invented the portable rotary lathe in the 50s.
His invention was a breakthrough because it enabled in-situ machining and repair work to be carried out on bearing journals on large rolls in paper mills for instance, saving the time and expense of major stripdowns.
He also developed an in-situ keyway cutter able to cut keys in shafts up to 75 cm long by 10 cm wide and another invention of his was the HB static-spindle bearing cartridge that totally revolutionised roll installation and maintenance.
His development enabled the bearing to be changed in-situ, without the roll having to be removed from the machine.
Other inventions include a single bearing 12 metre hydraulically driven floor level rotary turntable capable of coiling some 600 tonnes of submarine power and optical fibre cables without twist during manufacture.
Components machined today on the Combi 6000 are to far higher tolerance and surface finish than could be produced before and quite often repair and reclamation demands a lot of turning skill which, operator Dave Plant maintains, the Manual Guidei software on the Combi is extremely useful in support of what he needs to do.
He describes an often and classic case that would take ages to get the component running true and parallel when, say, a journal diameter has to be remachined.
'I set it true in a four-jaw chuck and then quickly program in a slight taper to compensate for parallelism rather than have to mess around jacking the tailstock.
This type of flexibility has allowed us to reduce a job that could take around three days to within a shift or at worst, a day and a half.' Much of the work is shaft based, these can be up to 300 mm diameter by 1,500 mm long and involving multi step diameters and the finish turning of journal diameters.
Tolerances tend to be 0.012 mm for bearing diameters and surface finish straight from the machine are often required to be within 0.8 and 1.6 um RA.
Says Dave Plant: 'Most of our shaft work is on pretty tough material such as EN24T and EN42 and due to the type of work a lot of threads are machined.
Here I find the screw cutting macros on the Combi are really helpful as we have to machine both metric and imperial and these can be between 50 mm and 300 mm diameter by 100 mm long.
We also have to produce the occasional taper thread.' He also makes use of the simulation on difficult parts and has found the rigidity of the Combi ideal for roughing out with 3 mm depth of cut on the shaft work.
'It will easily cut faster but you need to take into account insert life.
We are not a production shop,' he says, 'most parts are just single items but we do use the CNC for repeat cycles when we can have batches of up to six parts.' As Bill Hotchkiss maintains: 'We needed a machine that would give us a good quality turn.
It was the guys in the workshop that made the decision and they are the ones who make the installation a success.
When we look at the overall package from Colchestersales and the price that was paid, we feel we are getting a very good return on our investment.'
Friday, June 23, 2006
'Entry level' CNC lathe has wide application
A low cost, 'entry level' 15kW main spindle turning machine has been designed on the basis of machining a wide range of components within the smallest possible amount of space.
The new low cost, entry level, XYZ Mini Turn 190 turning centre has been designed on the basis of machining a wide range of components within the smallest possible amount of space. Although it is the smallest model in XYZ Machine Tools' range of turning centres, the 15kW, 4000 rev/min XYZ Mini Turn 190 is capable of a 200mm maximum turned diameter and has a maximum swing of 400mm. It also features a 56mm spindle bore, with a 42mm drawtube capacity, to accommodate oversize bar.
Axis travels are 155mm (X) and 510mm (Z), with rapid traverse rates of 12 and 14m/min, respectively.
Distance between centres is 500mm and the XYZ Mini Turn 190 is equipped with an 8-station turret that holds 40mm diameter boring bars and turning tools with a 20mm by 20mm shank.
Occupying a space-saving 2700mm (W) by 1670mm (D) by 1800mm (H), the XYZ Mini Turn 190 is equipped as standard with a 200mm three-jaw hydraulic chuck, flood coolant and Siemens 810D conversational Shopturn CNC.
Rigidity and vibration absorption is guaranteed by the Meehanite cast iron construction, with the machine weighing in at 4200kg, and auto lubricated hardened and ground slideways ensure smooth axes travel, minimum wear and a high quality surface finish for the machined component.
Offering a host of canned cycles, the Siemens 810D Shopturn control makes shopfloor programming fast and simple, involving the minimum of keystrokes and the maximum reassurance to the less experienced operator.
The new low cost, entry level, XYZ Mini Turn 190 turning centre has been designed on the basis of machining a wide range of components within the smallest possible amount of space. Although it is the smallest model in XYZ Machine Tools' range of turning centres, the 15kW, 4000 rev/min XYZ Mini Turn 190 is capable of a 200mm maximum turned diameter and has a maximum swing of 400mm. It also features a 56mm spindle bore, with a 42mm drawtube capacity, to accommodate oversize bar.
Axis travels are 155mm (X) and 510mm (Z), with rapid traverse rates of 12 and 14m/min, respectively.
Distance between centres is 500mm and the XYZ Mini Turn 190 is equipped with an 8-station turret that holds 40mm diameter boring bars and turning tools with a 20mm by 20mm shank.
Occupying a space-saving 2700mm (W) by 1670mm (D) by 1800mm (H), the XYZ Mini Turn 190 is equipped as standard with a 200mm three-jaw hydraulic chuck, flood coolant and Siemens 810D conversational Shopturn CNC.
Rigidity and vibration absorption is guaranteed by the Meehanite cast iron construction, with the machine weighing in at 4200kg, and auto lubricated hardened and ground slideways ensure smooth axes travel, minimum wear and a high quality surface finish for the machined component.
Offering a host of canned cycles, the Siemens 810D Shopturn control makes shopfloor programming fast and simple, involving the minimum of keystrokes and the maximum reassurance to the less experienced operator.
Turning centre machines wide range of materials
With its 12-tool VDI turret allied to a 254mm chuck and 550mm swing, a 22.5kW, turning centre is ideally suited to a range of parts in ferrous and NF metals and many engineering plastics.
Larry Houghton knows what it must be like to fly at speeds up to 44 miles/h for up to 120 km attached to little more than a parachute and a giant fan. He also knows what it is like to crack a few ribs when landing, although this painful experience has in no way diminished his enthusiasm for the exciting new sport of paramotoring. His involvement with what he describes as the closest you can get to having a James Bond jetpack strapped to your back stems from his day job running Lamb Engineering, a small sub-contracting company located in South Newton, west of Salisbury.
One of his customers is Parajet, the Mere, Wiltshire, UK-based company set up a couple of years ago by 26 years-old Giles Cardozo, inventor, engineer and pioneer of paramotoring.
Demand for the 24 hp Parajet Volution that, believe it or not, features cruise control as standard, is such that Parajet now claims to be gearing up to produce thousands of these powered paragliders each year.
This, in part, explains Larry Houghton's decision to install a XYZ 250 TC turning centre alongside several other machine tools supplied by XYZ Machine Tools.
Lamb Engineering's first XYZ purchase was a manual lathe equipped with digital readout, which was followed by two turret mills, the second a manual/CNC machine equipped with the easy-to-use ProtoTRAK control, and then two vertical machining centres.
The XYZ 250 TC is the company's most recent purchase, a decision that reflects both an increasing amount of turning work and its previous reliance on a rather elderly CNC lathe.
With its 12-tool VDI turret allied to a 254mm chuck and 550mm swing, the 22.5kW, 3500 rev/min XYZ 250 TC is ideally suited to the range of parts machined by Lamb Engineering in ferrous and non-ferrous metals and many types of engineering plastics.
Between them the XYZ CNC machines produce a range of components for the Parajet Volution 170 cc motor and, says Larry Houghton, have performed well, adding that the training and after-sales service he has received from the Burlescombe, Devon machine tool supplier cannot be faulted.
His ISO 9002 accredited company, which began in 1987 and moved to its present 2500ft2 site six years ago, is unusual in that as well as precision machining it is also equipped to produce electronic assemblies as well as for welding and fabrication work.
In addition to machining precision components for the Parajet Volution engine, Lamb Engineering also manufactures the guard that encases the carbon fibre blades.
This versatility, combined with the company's in-house design expertise and its willingness to manufacture anything from prototypes to finished products, has resulted in a diverse customer base that provides Houghton with the engineering challenges he thrives on.
Although only five people are involved, including Houghton's business partner, Andy Strange, Lamb Engineering has come a long way from its 'odd job' beginnings to what today he describes as a business whose expertise in solving customers' problems: 'Is what makes us stand out from companies offering only conventional manufacturing and engineering services.' Houghton said: 'We have established a solid reputation for finding the quickest route to a solution appropriate to the application, and our business has grown through recommendations passed on by customers who already trust us to respond quickly with a competitive price, generated either from a quick sketch or a fully fledged design.
Over the years we reckon to have saved customers such as Parajet substantial sums of money by coming up with less expensive alternatives to their original design and manufacturing requirements.
Larry Houghton knows what it must be like to fly at speeds up to 44 miles/h for up to 120 km attached to little more than a parachute and a giant fan. He also knows what it is like to crack a few ribs when landing, although this painful experience has in no way diminished his enthusiasm for the exciting new sport of paramotoring. His involvement with what he describes as the closest you can get to having a James Bond jetpack strapped to your back stems from his day job running Lamb Engineering, a small sub-contracting company located in South Newton, west of Salisbury.
One of his customers is Parajet, the Mere, Wiltshire, UK-based company set up a couple of years ago by 26 years-old Giles Cardozo, inventor, engineer and pioneer of paramotoring.
Demand for the 24 hp Parajet Volution that, believe it or not, features cruise control as standard, is such that Parajet now claims to be gearing up to produce thousands of these powered paragliders each year.
This, in part, explains Larry Houghton's decision to install a XYZ 250 TC turning centre alongside several other machine tools supplied by XYZ Machine Tools.
Lamb Engineering's first XYZ purchase was a manual lathe equipped with digital readout, which was followed by two turret mills, the second a manual/CNC machine equipped with the easy-to-use ProtoTRAK control, and then two vertical machining centres.
The XYZ 250 TC is the company's most recent purchase, a decision that reflects both an increasing amount of turning work and its previous reliance on a rather elderly CNC lathe.
With its 12-tool VDI turret allied to a 254mm chuck and 550mm swing, the 22.5kW, 3500 rev/min XYZ 250 TC is ideally suited to the range of parts machined by Lamb Engineering in ferrous and non-ferrous metals and many types of engineering plastics.
Between them the XYZ CNC machines produce a range of components for the Parajet Volution 170 cc motor and, says Larry Houghton, have performed well, adding that the training and after-sales service he has received from the Burlescombe, Devon machine tool supplier cannot be faulted.
His ISO 9002 accredited company, which began in 1987 and moved to its present 2500ft2 site six years ago, is unusual in that as well as precision machining it is also equipped to produce electronic assemblies as well as for welding and fabrication work.
In addition to machining precision components for the Parajet Volution engine, Lamb Engineering also manufactures the guard that encases the carbon fibre blades.
This versatility, combined with the company's in-house design expertise and its willingness to manufacture anything from prototypes to finished products, has resulted in a diverse customer base that provides Houghton with the engineering challenges he thrives on.
Although only five people are involved, including Houghton's business partner, Andy Strange, Lamb Engineering has come a long way from its 'odd job' beginnings to what today he describes as a business whose expertise in solving customers' problems: 'Is what makes us stand out from companies offering only conventional manufacturing and engineering services.' Houghton said: 'We have established a solid reputation for finding the quickest route to a solution appropriate to the application, and our business has grown through recommendations passed on by customers who already trust us to respond quickly with a competitive price, generated either from a quick sketch or a fully fledged design.
Over the years we reckon to have saved customers such as Parajet substantial sums of money by coming up with less expensive alternatives to their original design and manufacturing requirements.
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