Injection moulding specialist, Great Central Plastics (GCP), has strengthened its toolroom capabilities by investing in a three-axis vertical machining centre from MACH Machine Tools.
The new machine’s arrival has had a direct and immediate impact on the company’s toolroom productivity, improving floor-to-floor times and optimising process efficiencies.
The machine, a DynaPath-controlled MACH MDV 855-S, was installed at GCP’s 10,500sq. ft. facility in Northamptonshire in December 2024, and has significantly increased the machining capacity and capabilities of the company’s toolroom.
The MACH MDV 855-S is the first, production-oriented CNC-controlled machine tool GCP has acquired in its 27-year history and has been positioned in the company’s toolroom adjacent to a number of manual and semi-auto machines.
Since being installed, the new machine has been put through its paces machining a range of high-precision mould tool components i.e., bolsters and plates, cavity and core inserts and supporting fixtures etc, for GCP’s custom-designed and built mould tools.
GCP’s mould tools are designed and manufactured in-house in close collaboration with each and every customer.
The company offers expert Design for Manufacturing (DfM) consultancy services to customers in the planning and pre-production stages of every project to ensure that desired plastic parts can be manufactured quickly, easily and cost efficiently.
Pre-production services also include rapid prototyping using 3D printing technology for design validation and testing and, in some instances, as a cost-effective solution for low volume production runs.
For higher volumes, metal mould tools are designed and manufactured (machined) from a range of materials that include aluminium, P20 steel, hardened steel (H13), corrosion-resistant stainless steel etc.
GCP’s mould tools are characterised by their tight, tied-up geometrical tolerances and exacting surface finishes and, having been machined, inspected and signed-off, are moved from the toolroom to the company’s state-of- the-art mould shop which is geared up to manage quick tool and material changeovers.
GCP’s mould shop boasts 14 x injection moulding machines with different capacities and capabilities, and also features a range of finishing equipment – pad printing systems, hot foiling machines etc.
GCP’s investment in its new MACH MDV 855-S vertical machining centre followed a company-wide review, conducted in Autumn 2024, into all aspects of its design and production operations and processes.
The review highlighted that the company’s toolroom operation needed to be strengthened and that, in order improve existing mould tool manufacturing efficiencies and throughput as well as being able to handle new and more complex mould tool manufacturing in the future, the machining capacity and capabilities of its toolroom needed to be improved.
Kiron Phillips, GCP’s Business Development Director, said: “We are a successful company committed to growth through continuous improvement.
“As such, we regularly monitor and benchmark operational performance against KPI’s to identify actual and potential pinch-points and bottlenecks, and to address any issues that can or could affect quality, lead time fulfilment and cost efficiencies.
“Our toolroom is pivotal to our success and is the place where new mould tools are manufactured, and older tools are maintained and repaired.
“The toolroom effectively ‘feeds’ our injection moulding machines with high-quality, ‘right-first-time’ mould tools. If the toolroom’s not working to full capacity – neither are our moulding machines.”
As a consequence, following the review, the company made the decision to invest in the new CNC machine tool because, according to Kiron Phillips, “we simply could not allow our toolroom to be the weakest link in our process chain, moving forwards.”
MACH Machine Tools’ MACH MDV 855-S is a rigidly designed and built, high-precision and flexible 3-axis vertical machining centre supplied with the advanced DynaPath CNC control.
The machine is equipped with a generous-sized worktable (1100mm x 500mm) and a powerful 11kW/12,000rpm BT 40 direct-drive chilled spindle, with through-spindle-coolant capability, and features a 24-tool position ATC and impressive 36m/min rapids on its X-, Y- and Z-axes.
Mr Phillips concluded: “The new machine is proving to be a great investment. We are now able to manufacture our mould tools, and their constituent parts, faster than before.
“This has helped improve our floor-to-floor times and customer lead times too as our injection moulding production operation is no longer ‘waiting’ for mould tools to be finished.”
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