CNC Technology has increased in-house turning capacity in response to a significant increase in demand for oil and gas components.
The heavy-duty DN Solutions Puma GT 31000 two-axis, box guideway lathe, supplied by Mill CNC, was installed at the company’s 10,000sq. ft. facility in Cradley Heath in January 2025. Since its arrival, has been put through its paces machining, predominantly, a range of complex, high-precision parts for a UK oil and gas customer supplying corrosion monitoring equipment to the Middle East.
Oil and gas operations take place in demanding, and often unpredictable, environments that can significantly affect, over time, the performance of high-value machinery and equipment.
In order to maintain production, protect valuable assets and ensure that rigorous health and safety regulations are met, corrosion monitoring equipment is used extensively throughout the global oil and gas sector, and other refining industries.
Corrosion monitoring equipment components machined by CNC Technology are used in its customer’s retrievable and retractable access systems that are inserted into a pipeline to retrieve, in process and without affecting production, condition monitoring ‘data collection’ sensors and probes.
Towards the end of 2024, one of the company’s long-standing oil and gas customers announced its intention to significantly ramp up the volume of high-quality machined components, required for its corrosion monitoring systems.
These components – valves, housings, mountings and so on – are made from difficult-to-machine materials such as Inconels and superalloys and are characterised by their tight, tied-up tolerances, exacting surface finishes and complex features such as internal and external threads.
The components were previously machined in small volumes (and were supplied by CNC Technology to its customer as standalone parts ready for assembly.
However, the new order, designed to allow the customer to build up its stock of the most commonly used corrosion monitoring equipment components, required batch sizes of 300-off to be machined and supplied in one go.
Steve Littlehales, CNC Technology’s managing director said: “The advanced notification that volumes were set to increase dramatically (and virtually immediately) to batch sizes of 300-off, was clearly good news but, as we are not specifically geared up to handle large batch work, we knew that to fulfil the contract and to meet the quality, cost and lead times required, would need us to urgently review our existing in-house turning capacity and capabilities…fast.”
The resulting internal audit into the company’s existing turning capacity revealed that it would be difficult meeting the increased volumes without potentially affecting and compromising lead times for other customers.
“It was clear that we needed to invest in a new lathe,” he said.
CNC Technology had previously invested in a Doosan Lynx 220LM – a compact multi-tasking lathe with full mill and drill capabilities.
“The Lynx lathe is a great machine. It’s fast, accurate and flexible and continues to serve us well. “As we were in the market for a new lathe, we naturally approached Mills CNC as a potential supplier for the new machine, and outlined our requirements to them,” he said.
Owing to the nature of the materials being machined for the corrosion monitoring equipment components, and to help meet and, to some extent, future-proof its turning requirements moving forwards, the company decided against investing in another Lynx lathe in favour of a more powerful, box guideway machine with a longer turning length (790mm) and a larger turning diameter (525mm).
The 12” chuck DN Solutions’ Puma GT 3100 is a heavy-duty machine equipped with a 22kW/2,800rpm high-torque spindle, a 12-station servo-driven turret, a live-centre (MT5) tailstock and the advanced Fanuc 0iTP control with 15” iHMI touchscreen.
The machine supplied to CNC Technology also featured a parts catcher with conveyor, an auto tool setter and a FilterMist extraction unit.