Barrs Court Engineering has invested in a new vertical machining centre to increase in-house capacity and boost its high-mix, low-volume (HMLV) manufacturing operation.
The company is a precision machining and fabrication subcontractor based at Rotherwas in Herefordshire.
The new DN Solutions’ DNM 6700 vertical machining centre with Siemens 828D control, supplied by Mills CNC was installed in June this year. It is being .sed to machine high-precision complex parts, in low volumes, for a range of customers in sectors including marine, renewables, nuclear, steam, automotive and yellow goods/construction.
These parts, machined from a range of materials that include aluminium, mild steel, stainless steels, cast iron, Inconel, exotics, plastics etc., are characterised by tight tolerances and exacting surface finishes.
The DNM 6700 is also being used to finish-machine fabricated parts made by the company prior to their assembly.
Barrs Court Engineering, established in 1983, regularly invests in new, advanced machine tools as part of a rolling, company-wide continuous improvement programme designed to increase the company’s productivity, performance and process efficiencies across all of its machining operations.
Almost 12-months ago, Barrs Court Engineering began a strategic process of rationalising and streamlining its business by creating three discrete machining areas in its machine shop - each one focused on a specific production model designed to meet different customer’s machining needs and requirements.
Barrs Court Engineering’s managing director Toby Kinnaird said: “The new manufacturing strategy is focused on growth, and has imposed a discipline across all our planning and production operations.
“We analysed our existing business, including what our customers expected and demanded from us, and identified three different production ‘models’ which would direct how we would organise our machine shop and manufacturing operations i.e., the allocation of resources (people, technology etc.), moving forwards.”
The three models were: high-volume production; high-volume, low-mix production (HVLM); and job-shop production.
The HVLM model, manufacturing bespoke, high-quality components in small batches, has always been one of the company’s strengths and is seen as a high growth area .
Often requiring a ‘turnkey’ approach with machined parts characterised by their high-precision, complexity and long cycle times, the company specifically acquired the new DNM 6700 machining centre to strengthen its performance in this high-value production area.
“To increase our HMLV machining capacity and capabilities we made the decision, at the beginning of the year, to invest in a new high-performance machining centre to replace two of our older machines that had limited capacity”, said Toby Kinnaird.
“We were particularly looking for a machine with a larger X-axis to handle bigger parts which, up until then, and from a capacity perspective, had been out of our reach.”
The DNM 6700 has a large working envelope and with its 1300mm x 670mm x 625mm X/Y/Z-axis travels can be used to machine large components and/or multiple smaller parts in a single set up.
Mr Kinnaird added: “Our new DNM 6700 is powerful, fast, accurate and flexible. The Siemens Control is intuitive and is easy to use, making programming and job set ups quicker and more accurate.
“The integration of the 4th-axis table enables us to machine complex parts with intricate features in a single setup, avoiding the time and cost involved in re-fixturing operations and the potential for losing accuracy, and the inclusion of Renishaw workpiece and tool probes improves process efficiencies, ensures part quality and facilitates in-process measurement.”
Established in 1983, Barrs Court Engineering is a family-owned business that today employs nine members of staff.
The company, originally started out as a machine shop machining agricultural equipment and lubrication components for a handful of customers.
Since then the company has grown significantly, twice relocating to new, larger premises, investing in numerous CNC machine tools along the way and adding fabrication and assembly to the services it provides.