More capacity at Northants

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Northants Precision has invested in a third Lynx lathe from Mill CNC to increase its machining capacity and capabilities.

The latest arrival, a 6” chuck Lynx 2100 will help meet a significant increase in demand from the company’s growing customer base, which is predominantly in the motorsport sector.

The new machine joins a  Lynx 2100LMB and a Lynx 2100LB, purchased by the company in May and December 2021.

In addition to these three lathes, Northants Precision also has an older Lynx 220LSY lathe, equipped with sub-spindle, Y-axis and driven tooling capabilities, that owner and director, Daniel Green, already had in his possession when he created the company back in August 2020.

Together, these four Fanuc-controlled lathes, two of which have integrated multi-tasking capabilities, provide Northants Precision with the ability to offer quick-turnaround machining of small, complex and high-precision turned and milled parts.

Parts machined on the Lynx lathes are small, typically round and cylindrical in shape, and are held securely in position using 5C collet chucks to ensure high accuracy and the high precision machining of intricate features.

They include components for F1, rally and supercars chassis, sub-frames, gearboxes, track rod ends and engines.

Part volumes vary from one-offs to batches of thousands and are typically machined to +/- 5 microns on specific features with super-fine surface finishes.

A majority of parts are made from difficult-to-machine materials that include heat treated stainless steels – predominantly 13-8 PH and MP35N (a nickel-cobalt alloy).

Daniel Green said: “Motorsport is a demanding sector. In addition to supplying ‘right first time…every time’ high-quality, competitively-priced machined components, and meeting ever-stringent delivery deadlines, it’s important to have highly-efficient, effective and reliable software systems in place that help streamline the entire production process (from quotation to invoice), and that make it easy to record and retrieve pertinent business information.”

To facilitate this, Northants Precision invested in PSL Datatrack’s (modular) production control system early on – a strategic decision, as it turned out, that proved instrumental in helping the company achieve ISO 9001 accreditation in double-quick time.

Northants Precision has relocated twice since being established in 2020. Mr Green said: “With demand for our services growing fast and with the acquisition of a number of new customers, it became clear that we needed to invest in a fourth machine and that, in turn, meant finding, and moving to, larger premises.”

The move to its current location was planned and timed to coincide with the arrival of the new Lynx 2100 in September 2022.

To meet the high-volume production requirements of a new motorsport customer, Northants Precision has invested again. This time in a pre-owned sliding head lathe and bar feeder.

northantsprecision.com

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