SUBCONTRACTING TURNING
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Quality assured
According to Halesowen-based repetition turned parts specialist BMI Engineering, significant productivity, quality and
efficiency benefits have arisen since the introduction of tooling supplied by Horn Cutting Tools. Solutions takes a closer look.
B
MI produces components for a wide range of industries saves 1mm of material
including pipe and plumbing fittings, specialised compared with alternative tooling
fasteners and other engineered components. whilst the sharpness of the
Batch quantities of 5,000 are not untypical although the cutting edge minimises the burr
company handles small batch quantities as well. Virtually all of the on the centre hole. Saving 1mm
company’s production is from mild steel billet or bar though many of on part-off provides ‘free’
these are sent out for plating, coating or other treatments to meet material for every third washer,
customer requirements. enabling BMI to keep the
In some cases, through the use of Horn Tooling, it has proved business.
possible to rationalise the number of set-ups needed to finish The mainstays of BMI’s
machined components whilst in others significant reductions in cycle production are fifteen Wickman
time have been accompanied by increased tool life and improved as- multi-spindle autos,
machined finish which has reduced the need for manual deburring. supplemented by a smaller
The company’s association with Horn began at Mach 2006 when number of CNC lathes – some
BMI was looking for a solution to a face grooving problem. As a with C axis capabilities – and a
result of the contact made at the show Horn was able to provide a recently acquired CNC mill used
solution using the System 312 triple edge insert. The success of that for second operation work.
application laid the foundation for an ongoing association. Nearly all parts produced in
BMI’s machine shop supervisor, Robert Bingham, comments: “The the factory require internal or
capabilities available with Horn’s range of grooving, threading and external threading whilst a large
part-off tooling have made us more competitive. Our local Horn family of conduit connectors are
applications engineer has helped us to develop a number of threaded at either end. It is here that Horn tooling has arguably had a second operation using a
modified machining cycles that save us time and material – in some the greatest impact. manually operated horizontal
cases making us competitive with suppliers operating in low wage “The Horn 229 threading tooling allows plenty of clearance to get spindle milling machine equipped
Our local Horn
economies like India.” the tool in place for back threading so we can do both the front and with a slotting cutter.
A case in point
the back in a single set-up,” Mr Bingham explains. “Before we started Mr Bingham recalls: “This
applications
using it we had to turn the parts in two operations; first we produced wasn’t a satisfactory method as
engineer has helped
A good example has been the production of washers on a multi- the front thread and this was manually screwed into a fixture held in the cycle time was a lengthy 45
spindle machine. The narrow profile of the Horn 224C part off insert the chuck for generation of the back end thread. Now we get a seconds and the component was
us to develop a
finished part in less than half the time overall.” manually fed so finish was
He continues: “In addition, it’s quite a large family of parts inconsistent. In addition, tool life
number of modified
produced in batches from 50 to 500 and requiring threads from M10 was poor and the worn tooling
to M70. With Horn tooling we can accommodate that with a simple would generate burrs so we had
machining cycles
exchange of the insert.” quality issues. As we produce
Groove moves
around 27,000 of these that save us time
components per annum an
Elsewhere in the factory use of a Supermini 105 threading tool has improved solution was desirable.”
and material – in
solved a swarf problem that was leading to regular breakage of M10 As luck would have it the
taps and resultant downtime. However the most recent Horn company had recently acquired a
some cases making
application at BMI involves groove milling. new CNC milling machine which
For some time the company has been producing a stud type had time available and Horn was
us competitive with
component called a pivot pin. This requires generation of a 3mm consulted to provide a solution.
wide keyway type slot with a fully radiused profile to locate in a This took the form of a fully
suppliers operating
mating component. Initial attempts to produce the feature in cycle radiused Type 313 groove milling
in low wage
using a slot mill on a C axis equipped CNC lathe had not been insert whilst the existing fixture
successful so BMI had therefore resorted to producing the feature as was modified to provide access
economies
for the Horn tooling as the revised
method necessitates that the cut
be made at the 9 o’clock position
rather than 12 o’clock. Utilising cutting data of 220m/minute and a
feed rate of 850mm/minute, the load to unload cycle time has
reduced to 15 seconds and both finish and tool life have improved
significantly.
“The new method works extremely well which is what we’ve come
to expect from Horn.” Mr Bingham concludes. “Basically we’ve
reached the stage where if we need to part off or machine a groove
or thread then Horn is our first port of call. The applications support
is first class and from a cost point of view, our experience has been
that for our type of work the investment in high quality tooling has
been repaid many times over.”
> HORN > BMI ENGINEERING
www.phorn.co.uk www.bmi-engineering.co.uk
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