Velden Engineering (UK) Ltd has taken delivery of a Nakamura-Tome NTY3-150 twin spindle 3-turret turning centre from the Engineering Technology Group (ETG).
Delivered in March, the new addition has been purchased to produce high-volume components beyond the size capacity of the company’s sliding head turning centres.
Based in Bolton, Velden offers a complete range of services including CNC machining, laser cutting, waterjet machining, sheet metalwork, assembly, design and development and more. The company now serves clients in sectors as diverse as nuclear, offshore, rail, motorsport, aerospace, automotive, environmental, medical and pharmaceutical.
In 2012, the manufacturer acquired its first Nakamura-Tome turning centre, a compact WT100 twin-spindle twin turret machine. This formed part of a strategy to replace older machines with modern multi-tasking machines to reduce the number of operations and improve efficiency.
A decade later that first WT100 machine was replaced by a brand new WT150II that arrived in November. This has now been followed by the new Nakamura-Tome NTY3-150.
Lee said: “Many of our enquiries are now for parts in higher volumes with increased complexity that are above the size parameters for our sliding-head machines. As a 3-turret machine all with Y-axis, the Nakamura NTY3-150 machine opens up a greater opportunity to do even more simultaneous machining and it will deliver even faster cycle times. This will be possible through the use of special tooling on what will be very price-sensitive parts. The additional cost of the Nakamura NTY3-150 will be offset by allowing us to be even more competitive on certain packages of work and it will therefore enable us to win a lot of new business off the back of it.”
He says: “Just on one specific part that we have transferred to the NTY3-150, we have seen a reduced cycle time of 40%. That has taken the cycle time from 2 minutes 30 seconds to less than 1 minute 30 seconds. The cost implications are therefore huge. We already had very productive machines, but the new Nakamura-Tome NTY3-150 means we can be competitive on parts where we used to struggle to compete previously. This will obviously open up new markets, industries and production opportunities for us.”
“The capability of simultaneous machining and three turrets with Y-axis is now allowing us to machine parts of even greater complexity that we could either not have done or done competitively previously.
Furthermore, having the other Nakamura machines and in particular the WT150II, the latest NTY3-150 fits in nicely and is familiar to our business and our operators. The new NTY3-150 offers extra capacity, improved productivity, flexibility and capability and it extends the life of our range of fully reliable turning machines.”