tooling
Focusing on tooling delivered a number of improvements,
some unexpected, to a precision engineering firm striving to
control costs through better productivity.
Complete benefits package
Quinton Major’s Daniel
Clark (right) discusses
the merits of the 2011
milling cutters with WNT
Technical sales engineer,
Warren Howard
read more about
tooling at
www.mwponline.com
New Products
and Services
■ Faster changeover
times from Hardinge
Hardinge
http://tinyurl.com/3454wp
■ Walter upgrades with
Tiger Tec
Walter
http://tinyurl.com/2mbdpx
Case Studies
■ Automated tool supply
control and ordering
Autocrib
http://tinyurl.com/2umpus
Features
■ Tooling under pressure
Sandvik Coromant
http://tinyurl.com/2sqpqu
QUINTON Major Precision was founded out of the
adversity that was the recession of the late 1970s and early
1980s. It two founders, Frank Clark and Rodger Smith,
were employed at the time by Brown Brothers
Engineering (originally Brown Brothers Aircraft). When
this was closed by Dana, its American parent company,
they purchased the stock and machines that made up the
‘gear-lever section’ and formed a new company, Underfold
in 1982 to manufacture nine varieties of assemblies for
Land Rovers, Sherpa Vans and the SD1 Rover car. Within
the first year the company had grown and was taking on
more work formerly undertaken by Brown Brothers. The
result was a first year turnover of £334,000 and a change
of name to Quinton Major Precision.
The company now has a turnover of £3 million and
like many other subcontract manufacturing businesses, is
under pressure to reduce costs through improved
productivity. For example, a component made from
forged EN8 had for over nine years been subjected to
many machining techniques and solutions to try and
improve productivity. Production manager Daniel Clark
explains what happened when he asked WNT to look at
improving the tooling aspect: ‘Initially our thoughts
were focused on price, as we did not expect any major
improvement on tool life. Given the volumes involved, if
we could simply reduce tooling costs that would have
been helpful. However, with the introduction of the 2011
cutters from WNT we immediately saw an improvement
in the number of components being produced per set of
60 MWP november 2007
inserts. It was the blend of the cutters’ soft cutting action
resulting from the combination of insert and cutter body
design that delivered an increase from three to four parts
per insert change to over 30 parts.’
Building on this initial success Quinton Major has
continued to work closely with Warren Howard, WNT’s
technical sales engineer to further refine the
manufacturing method. The result is that tool life has
increased by 1275%, to 55 parts per insert change. Also,
from going through four to six cutter bodies a month -
due to insert failure - it rarely has to replace a cutter
body, resulting in major cost savings.
Increased tool life is not the only benefit attributed to the
2011 cutters. ‘Every other cutter that we had tried left burrs
that had to be removed manually after machining. With
the 2011 cutter we get no burr and, where we have to stepover
to achieve the complete depth of cut we are not getting
any witness marks, something that we couldn’t achieve
before’ says Clark. This process of stepping over to achieve
the face depth also illustrates the benefits of the technical
support provided by WNT. Due to being restricted to using
a 16mm diameter cutter with an 11mm insert edge length
three cuts have to be taken to achieve the 16 mm depth of
cut required. Warren Howard suggested splitting the cuts
into 5.5mm and 5.0mm for the first two and then a final
5.5mm cut to complete the process. However, this last cut
used the top half of the insert that previously had never
been used. This relatively simple change, of using the
entire length of the insert, was instrumental in upping the
tool life, but was only possible because of the true 90°
degree approach of the WNT 2011 cutter.
‘WNT are always offering suggestions of how to
improve machining applications,’ says Clark, ‘and, on this
particular job, once they had delivered increased
productivity they then suggested an alternative system for
removing swarf from the work area and keeping the job
and tool cool.’ The system being used is Cooljet, which
uses a blast of chilled air to remove swarf and to keep
component, tool and machine spindle at a controlled
temperature. The other advantage is the ability to now cut
the job dry, which has environmental benefits, something
that Quinton Major is keen to develop. ‘While running
dry has obvious environmental benefits there are other
aspects of dealing with WNT that are also of help to us in
developing our environmental policy; we are asked more
and more by customers for details of our carbon footprint
and how we are offsetting it. WNT is one of the very few
suppliers that we have that is making a conscious effort to
help the environment. All of the plastic insert boxes are
recyclable, as is all of the other packaging that WNT uses.
This may seem like a relatively trivial thing but it is
becoming more important.’
www.wnt.com
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