Feature Production machinery
Machine duo puts manufacturer in control T
ubesheet’s production manager Steve Howkins says: ‘The result of using the Hartford since it was commissioned during last year is that we are now able to comfortably process plates of over two metres diameter, and, with the Webster & Bennett borer, we now have total con- trol over the quality, delivery and cost of finish machining routines on cer- tain components”.
Based in Derbyshire, Tubesheet has since its establishment in 1985 spe- cialised in the supply of non-ferrous forged and rolled tube plates, primarily for use in the heat exchanger industry. Around 65 per cent of business is accounted for by direct exports. Howkins says the immediate avail- ability from Ward CNC of the Hartford Infinity made the search for a suitable machine easy when Tubesheet was looking to extend its in-house capabil- ity from processing workpieces 12mm to 198mm thick, to producing tube plates over two metres diameter. “As well as being held in stock at
Ward’s Sheffield site, the machine also obviously met our technical and bud- getary requirements,” he says. “It was soon successfully put to work mainly drilling various diame- ters and performing a small amount of spigot milling on the range of tube plates we process, mainly as one-offs.” With X, Y and Z axes of 3,050mm by 2,100mm by 780/1,070mm, the Hartford Infinity HAS-3210 double column vertical machining centre also offers rapid traverse rates of 15m/min
Not only is a Ward CNC-supplied Hartford Infinity double-column vertical machining centre allowing Tubesheet, a manufacturer of heat exchanger tube plates, to tackle larger workpieces, but the more recent installation of a pre-owned Ward CNC vertical boring machine has also allowed the company to bring in-house a range of previously outsourced components
in X and Z, and 12m/min in Y, and cutting feed rates of 8,000 revs/min to complement a spindle speed of 6,000 /10,000 revs/min from its 22/26kW spindle. It is fitted with a 20/32 tool automatic toolchanger, which pro- vides Tubesheet with more than ade-
Two Ward CNC machines are helping Tubesheet tackle larger workpieces and bring outsourced work in house
quate capability for the wide range of drill diameters required.
Steve Howkins says that the Heidenhain iTNC 530 CNC and com- plementary drive package was specifi- cally selected to complement the company’s continuous use of the EdgeCAM CAD/CAM system. This enables electronics drawings to be received via email. EdgeCAM then quickly converts these into NC pro- grams with appropriate speeds, feeds and tool selections.
After the success of the Hartford, it was an easy decision to opt for a Ward vertical borer when Tubesheet decided to bring in-house finish machining operations on spigots, to meet an ultra- high surface finish of Ra 3.2 – 6.3. “The overall service and back-up support that Ward had previously pro- vided made it a no-brainer to go back to them when we were looking for a secondhand borer, and, again, this was immediately available from stock and at the right price,” he concludes.
TW Ward CNC Machinery T: 0114 276 5411
www.wardcnc.com
Enter 315
A Super Alloys International, of Milton Keynes is said to have the first UK installation of a new breed of advanced, ultra-high performance, high-speed bandsawing systems, which include ‘auto-marking’ of cut material and ‘auto-output palletising’. Suitable for the processing of notoriously difficult-to-cut alloys, these new bandsawing systems are said to achieve dramatic reductions in cutting cycle times, plus huge gains in processing efficiency. Installed at RA Super Alloys’ modern Milton Keynes site by Kaltenbach, two new Behringer HBM440A straight cutting bandsawing systems, will cut for example, 255mm Titanium 6AL4V in 15 minutes, when the industry historical norm can be anywhere between 25 to 45 minutes. Nickel Alloy, Inconel 718, is cutting up to 60 per cent faster, compared to the previous generation of high-performance Behringer saws, which were already cutting far faster than industry norms. Installed in two different configurations, both HBM440A machines are carbide or HSS blade compatible, with servo-driven
Automated bandsaw cuts difficult metals faster R
ball screw down-feed, along with IBC (Intelligent Blade Control) and sophisticated NC management. One machine is a stand- alone, semi-automatic, straight-cutting machine, providing rapid, flexible processing of requirements up to 440mm or square and 6m long, while the other is fully-automated, with input magazine. The fully-automated system, flatbed input magazine accepts up to nine raw material bars, each up to 250mm or square x 4.5m long, controlled via a stand-alone, coloured touch-screen, which enables rapid user-friendly selection and input of all raw material types and includes a ‘vibro-engraving’, marking system, which auto-marks the end-face of each cut piece of material, with alphanumeric batch code and/or text, in a choice of fonts and styles. All-new, auto-sorting six-station palletising of material output is included, plus trim-cut storage and an auto return-to-stock material holding area to one side of the input magazine. A internet link also allows remote monitoring and service interrogation of the saws. “To offer the quality and level of service we provide requires good staff, good logistics, extensive metal stocks and the best
processing technology, which our new bandsaws fully satisfy,” says Wayne Houchin, operations manager, RA Super Alloys. Kaltenbach
T: 01234 213201 Factory Equipment MARCH 2011
www.kaltenbach.co.uk Enter 316 21
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