EV Engineering has bought four Okuma mill-turn centres and two machining centres in a move that will allow it to transition to 24-hour production.
Founded in 2001 by David White, the subcontractor specialises in producing complex prismatic components in exotic materials for the oil, gas and energy sector, which accounts for around three-quarters of the firm's turnover.
Mr White said, "The decline in the industry during the middle of the last decade made it difficult for us to invest in new equipment sooner. However, we have used the current short-term downturn caused by the pandemic to invest and upgrade all aspects of our High Wycombe facility."
The first Okuma machine was a Multus mill-turn machining centre with a B-axis spindle installed in 2018. The 5-axis Multus features advanced collision avoidance in real-time both in-cycle and in-manual mode, preventing collisions and minimising unscheduled downtime.
Mr White commented, "It is an extremely rigid, slant-bed lathe on which we carry out a lot of machining including deep hole drilling in titanium and Inconel. It is not feasible to leave it to produce such high-value parts unattended, so we do not intend to add automation on this machine.
"The same currently goes for the Okuma Genos L3000 that we bought the same year, as it is a two-axis lathe with live tooling dedicated to producing smaller parts in lower volumes.
"It is our intention, however, to retrofit a robot to the Multus U3000-2SW multitasking B-axis lathe with automatic tool changer, lower turret and sub-spindle we installed in December 2019 to give us the benefit of lights-out running."
The final mill-turn unit is an Okuma Space Turn LB3000-MY lathe with a live Y-axis turret. This is currently on order and due for delivery in May 2021, is already prepared by sole UK agent NCMT for automation. It will be fitted with a Belgian-manufactured RoboJob Turn-Assist, which features a flexible workpiece stacker and a 6-axis robot for loading and unloading workpieces.
The plan is to use shop floor programming for fast turnaround components that do not require the use of CAD, freeing the engineering department to concentrate on producing the more complex cycles offline.
In addition to automating two of its turning machines, EV Engineering intends to install an automated pallet storage and handling system to feed two 5-axis machining centres, one of which has yet to arrive to replace a smaller 3-axis model. As with the lathes, extended periods of unattended operation will allow one operator to look after multiple machines, driving down manufacturing costs and maximising return on investment.
EV Engineering Ltd 01494 853423