A new Nakamura turning centre at Skelmersdale subcontractor Kirkham Engineering will give flexibility and fast response times on low-volume, quick-turnaround parts.
The Nakamura Tome AS-200L-LMYSF turning centre was installed in October 2020 and follows the installation of a similar machine in 2017. Both were supplied by the Engineering Technology Group.
Founded in 1955, Kirkham Engineering established its reputation as a specialist in the production of repetition turned parts on CNC fixed head and sliding head machines. With a focus on the oil and gas industries and petrochemical sectors it produces everything from simple to complex parts in material types from ferrous and non-ferrous metals through to exotic nickel alloys such as Duplex, Monel, Inconel, Hastelloy, titanium and Stellite.
The new machine is a response to an increasing workload, but as Kirkham director Barry Lynam explains the new machine had a specific purpose: “The AS-200-LMYSF can be set-up extremely quickly and this gives us flexibility for small batch runs of fast turnaround parts. It can respond far quicker than our more complex machines. It has a large work envelope in a small footprint and it is extremely robust which is perfect for heavy-duty cutting.”
Supplied as a complete package from Wellesbourne based ETG, the AS-200-LMYSF arrived complete with tooling, a Hydrafeed MSV-65 plus a BSU bar support unit to give 1.5m barfeed and swarf conveyor.
The machine has a maximum turning diameter of 280mm with a maximum through-spindle bar diameter of 65mm. This enables batch and production runs of small to medium-sized parts courtesy of the Hydrafeed barfeed unit. The 8-inch chuck machine has a maximum turning length of 570mm and the 5.5/3.7kW 15-station tooling turret provides high torque for heavy-duty cutting and high material removal rates.
Kirkham Engineering purchased its first Nakamura machines in 2012 when it acquired two second-hand Nakamura WT250 twin-spindle twin-turret turning centres. “The 1999 Nakamura WT250 machines were purchased for making repetitive niche parts from 2-inch diameter billets. The components for the offshore sector were previously being completed in nine operations. The Nakamura WT250 machines brought this down to a single set-up operation that only required secondary part identity marking. The machines reduced the machining time from 30 minutes to 12 minutes – if you added the time for multiple set-ups, the savings would have been very significant. We were instantly sold on Nakamura machines.”
Since 2012, Kirkham added to its two initial WT250 turning centres with two additional WT250 machines, a second-generation WT250 II and a WT150MMY – all purchased at auction.
Barry Lynam says the new AS-200-LMYSF was a perfect fit for the business.
“We already have highly capable twin spindle and twin turret machines, but we wanted something that had a smaller footprint and was faster to programme and get up and running – the AS-200L fitted the bill. Unlike the larger machines, the AS-200-LMYSF is the latest generation machine with the new FANUC CNC unit and NT Machine Simulation and NT Collision Guard from Nakamura Tome. This allows us to rapidly programme and simulate our components and run the first part with confidence and speed. The culmination of having the latest generation of Nakamura software built into the FANUC CNC control means we can programme and produce parts on the AS-200-LMYSF much faster than we would on other machines. This allows us to be even more responsive to customer demands for fast-turnaround jobs, especially small batch runs,” adds Mr Lynam.
“We machine a lot of parts to the NORSOK petroleum standards for the offshore industry and this sees us machining a lot of hexagonal nuts, bolts and valves from some very difficult materials. As hexagonal bar stock from stockholders is not always up to the standards we require, we buy round bar and undertake a lot of heavy-duty milling of flats on our Nakamura machines. Here, the stability and construction of the machine base combined with the heavy-duty high-powered tooling turret give us complete confidence that we can undertake high material removal rates on some very challenging materials whilst obtaining exceptional surface finishes