Having to increase its manufacturing capacity, a subcontractor has invested GBP 250,000 in CNC lathes and a vertical machining centre to meet growing oil/gas/subsea components demand.

UK subcontractor to expand CNC machine tool park Having to increase its manufacturing and size machining capacity, a subcontractor has invested GBP 250,000 in CNC lathes and a vertical machining centre to meet growing oil/gas/subsea components demand. Investing more than GBP 250,000 in a package of Colchester-Harrison CNC machine tools from 600 Centre of Shepshed, subcontract precision machinist Ultimate Precision of Jarrow, Tyne and Wear sees the purchase of five machines as important in increasing its capacity to cope with 60 to 70% increases in production demands from oil and gas and subsea sectors. The order, involving progressive installation of a Colchester-Harrison Combi 6000, MultiTurn 4000 and 2000 flat-bed CNC lathes, a Tornado T8, two-axis lathe and a Storm VMC 1300 vertical machining centre, is part of the company's planned increase from small to medium size part machining into high specification parts up to 1m cube and up to 1m diameter by 4m long.

The company, under managing director Ken Davidson, employs 30 people and has grown from its formation in 1997 supplying aerospace, automotive, medical and general engineering sectors.

It has recently added 55% to its turnover from contracts gained from subsea and offshore industry customers.

Said sales and marketing manager Andy Hey: 'We still produce batch work for existing customers and continuous production for the automotive sector, which tends to have very tight margins, but the new areas are really very challenging in materials, tolerances and machining knowledge so we need production equipment that is reliable, accurate and very flexible.' The company investigated the machines available and while managing the growth of the business, value for money against equipment performance and flexibility were key markers on the comparison spread sheets.

'Here,' said Hey, 'The performance of the Combi and its specification fitted our requirements exactly against machines costing 45% more.

We also have the factory in Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire providing a close lifeline for support because our philosophy is not to let customers down on delivery.' In addition to general materials, Ultimate Precision also produces parts from exotic materials and bespoke alloys, such as Duplex and Super Duplex, stainless steels and ceramics.

Tolerances run into a few microns on certain dimensions and high orders of surface finish are commonplace.

Here programming was a key element in judging the flexibility ranking of the machines and by standardising on Fanuc control, which is a key part of the 600 Group machine's specifications, means the setters on the shopfloor are quick to adapt to the new installations.

In addition to the machines from 600 Centre, the company has installed Fanuc's FAPT off-line programming and made good use of the on-machine interfaces and macros developed by Colchester-Harrison.

Altogether, the CNC plant list at Ultimate Precision has 21 machines and three co-ordinate measuring machines.