CITIZEN SLIDING HEAD POWERS MOVE TO NEW HIGH TECHNOLOGY ‘ONE-HIT’ METHODS

Key to expanding the subcontract machining capability of R W Brown Precision Engineering of Clacton is the recent installation of a Citizen L20 CNC sliding head automatic lathe from NC Engineering of Watford.

Said managing director Bob Brown: "Although we are a fairly small operation with only three people, we have been very successful in supplying turned parts and performing prismatic part machining for food packaging machinery, diesel engine manufacture, plastic moulders and special purpose machinery companies. Now is the time to expand our business and invest to produce higher value added and more complicated components which benefit from single cycle mill/turning operations."

R W Brown already has three CNC lathes, a machining centre and CNC mill, cylindrical and surface grinding and a centre lathe producing batches of between 10 and 100 parts. Materials machined are as diverse as stainless steel, aluminium, brass and high alloy steels. The addition of the citizen L20 with C-axes on both the main and subspindle will enable the company to move into the instrument and medical component area while being more competitive by providing ‘one-hit’ mill/turn cycles to the existing customer base.

"We have been costing out existing components and reckon the Citizen is so productive that even if we had to increase our hourly rate by 50 per cent we would be far more competitive than we could ever hope to achieve with our existing methods of multi-operational techniques."

The decision to buy their first CNC sliding head lathe from NC Engineering was made from a combination of machine capability and the willingness to provide support. "Indeed," maintains Bob Brown, "with the number of changeovers we are doing, the level of hand holding support we have received from NC Engineering has made the change in technology almost painless."

"With the inclusion of NC Engineering’s Alkartpro off-line programming system this has helped to reduce setting times on the new machine tremendously. "No one pays you to program, the profit comes from the product you supply," he maintains.