Birmingham toolmaker Tooling 2000 has invested over £1.8m to develop a subcontract machining service and diversify its business.
Since 1996 the company has focused mainly on the design, production and tryout of tools for the automotive industry, notably for Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan and Rolls-Royce / Bentley.
With a view to strengthening its position in the industry and also to break into providing subcontract machining services to other sectors such as power generation, especially renewable energy, the company has invested £1.8 million in the last two years in new plant and hiring extra people.
A significant proportion of the spend has gone on acquiring new machine tools from Hurco including a TM12i CNC lathe with a 12-inch chuck and the toolmaker's first two 5-axis machining centres, a VMX60SRTi and aVMX42SRTi.
The SRTi machines have a torque motor-driven, swivelling B-axis spindle head and 600 mm diameter C-axis set flush into a fixed machine table create a compact, high-capacity platform that can be used as a large-capacity 3/4-axis machine whenever the need arises.
Tooling 2000's manufacturing director Brian Abbott said, "In recent years, there has been a growing demand from customers for the supply of more complex components that require 5-axis machines to produce them cost effectively.”
Machine operator Dean Henning added, "Hurco machines are best suited to our type of work because the conversational control with WinMax software is easy to use and we can program most jobs on the shop floor. Even on the 5-axis models we can use the Hurco control to program 3+2-axis cycles.
Additionally, a large, 3-axis DCX42i travelling-column machine with X / Y travels of 4.2 / 2.6 metres and a maximum table load of 16 tonnes was installed in 2020 to provide capacity for producing larger press tools and components. Currently the largest machine available from Hurco, it has a 10,000 rpm spindle with BT50 interface and a 40-position tool magazine. The availability of this capacity sets Tooling 2000 apart from much of the competition in the area.
Mr Abbott confirmed, "Not many suppliers offer this size of machine at an affordable price. We visited Hurco and it was our operators who chose the DCX because they like the flexibility of the control.
"It helps them to program parts without making mistakes, which would be costly in the case of these large components. The machine also has excellent swarf removal and holds very tight tolerances."