Fabricator and sheet-metal specialist Mitre Industries has added in-house machining to its capabilities.
The company’s fabrication and sheetmetal expertise covers diverse areas such a jigs and fixtures, storage systems, duct work and materials handling systems. So, while it was well equipped when it came to bending, folding, rolling and welding, it had very limited machining capacity; relying on subcontractors as and when required. The downside to this was that it often found itself at the back of the queue due to its low-volume and infrequent requirements. Therefore, when it won a large contract that would be subject to tight deadlines the decision was taken to invest and bring machining in-house, which it did by working with XYZ Machine Tools.
An order was placed for an XYZ SMX 3500 bed mill, which was installed around three weeks later once space had been created for it. This machine was intended to cover the majority of the machining on this new contract, with its 1372 by 356 table size, along with axis travels of 787 by 508 by 500 mm (XYZ) and its ProtoTRAK control being capable of covering most of the work. However, the initial contract increased and the need for additional capacity became apparent. In discussion with XYZ’s area Sales Manager, Martyn Jones the decision was taken to bring in an XYZ 1000 LR vertical machining centre.
“The XYZ 1000 LR has given us greater flexibility and the ability for me to run jobs that benefit from the toolchanger, while I continue to operate the SMX 3500,” says machinist Andy Butcher. “The step-up from the ProtoTRAK control to the Siemens 828D control was straightforward and, so far, I haven’t had to make use of any of the free training offered by XYZ, we may well just keep that in-hand for when we take on new operators.”
Andy’s father David, a Director of Mitre, said: “Andy had some experience of XYZ machines from his previous employer, so we had confidence that they could deliver what we wanted. From my perspective as a non-machinist they have proved to be a shrewd investment delivering a cost-effective and speedy solution to our machining requirements. A further benefit is the quality of work that Andy is able to produce. This hasn’t gone un-noticed by our customers and is leading to more machining work, so we are entering a win-win situation as we have the capacity to spare now that we have the XYZ 1000 LR and also the ability to be highly competitive in the type of work we are being asked to produce.”
That work may not normally be considered ideal for a machining centre, as typical batch sizes are anything from one-off to 20-off, but Mitre Industries is finding the XYZ 1000 LR with its Siemens control extremely efficient due to the ease of set-up , mixed with the ability to import files through offline CAM system without any issues with post-processing.