Hopwood gears has added new EDM and turn-milling capacity after a 100% increase in turnover in the past two years.
The Oldham-based company, which derives half of its turnover from the manufacture of steel, aluminium and plastic gears and the remainder from high precision subcontract work, particularly for the robotics and defence sectors, has invested in a three-machine package from NCMT to boost production capacity.
One is a Makino U6 H.E.A.T. wire EDM machine capable of long periods of unattended running. The other two are from Okuma, a twin-spindle Genos L300-MYW CNC turn-mill centre and a Genos M560-V-e vertical machining centre (VMC).
Behind the latest investment by the family-run firm was a doubling of turnover to £4 million over the past two years, despite the pandemic. The latest additions bring Hopwood Gears' tally of 4-axis VMCs to six, while there are now eight CNC lathes and two wire EDM machines on-site. The company also operates many other CNC and manual machine tools, including a horizontal machining centre, water jet cutters, hobbers, rack cutters, broaches and grinders - more than 100 in all.
Although the initial contact with NCMT had focused on power skiving, gear hobbing and simultaneous bevel cutting on machining centre and multi-tasking lathe platforms, the shortfall in capacity in Oldham lay elsewhere. It was in prismatic machining of general subcontract parts, which is the remit of the Genos VMC, and in turn-milling of gears in one hit, which mostly occupies the Genos lathe. The Makino is employed for 90% of its time in gear production, mainly for wire-cutting keyways in hardened steel.
The VMC was supplied as standard with a 22 kW / 15,000 rpm / 200 Nm face-and-taper contact, through-coolant spindle. It helps to deliver the high productivity that Hopwood Gears demands, as do cutting feed rates of up to 32 m/min.
Hopwood Gears' managing director Cory Hopwood added, "We need our machine tools to make money so they have to run continuously. We therefore place great importance on machine reliability and after-sales back-up.
"Although NCMT is a new supplier to our factory, we are confident they can provide the right level of support because of their technical knowledge and the service infrastructure that is in place for the extensive turnkey side of their business.
"As a result of our rapid growth, there was a shortfall of milling, turning and EDM capacity and we were constantly running behind with orders, but that situation has changed dramatically."
He said that the Makino U6 H.E.A.T. is 30% quicker at cutting than the other EDM machine on-site and uses 30% less wire.
Favourable features of the Genos L300-MYW CNC lathe were listed as the 15 kW / 570 Nm spindle with three-year warranty, hand-scraped box ways, Y-axis travel of the turret and the provision of 12 driven tool stations, permitting one-hit production of complex components to reduce production cost and lead-times.
A Hydrafeed bar magazine from elsewhere in the Oldham factory was retrofitted so that the machine is able to run unattended for long periods, including overnight.