KM Engineering

Three instances of work having been won back from India are cited by Lyn Stafford-Pelham, who runs the family-owned subcontract business, KM Engineering, Norwich.

Two of the jobs are for 120,000 mild steel components per year, one a threaded spacer for truck bodies and the other for busbar assemblies. The third contract is for 40,000 stainless steel parts annually. All are made on three Star sliding-head, multi-axis mill-turn centres installed since 2003.

Lyn's husband, Ken, said that in each case the customer, a major supplier to UK OEMs, had waited several weeks for the parts to be shipped from an Indian subcontractor. On arrival, they were either out of tolerance or the quality of plating was sub-standard.

The latest Star lathe to is an 11-axis ECAS-32T. One component manufactured in batches of 3,000-off is an aluminium 6262 climate control knob for a sports car.

To accommodate a fibre optic cable, a fine hole has to be drilled on the front face at an angle of 7 degrees to the horizontal and to within 5 microns positional tolerance. To complete this operation, Star supplied an angle drilling attachment that occupies one position in the upper, 10-station turret.

Simultaneous profile milling on the back face could not be performed in-cycle without the 4-axis capability on the opposed spindle and driven endworking tools. A 2nd op on a machining centre would be required, which would significantly increase production cost.

 

"UK firms can compete if they buy advanced cnc machine tools like Star sliders and adopt one hit production"

 

Lyn Stafford Pelham

KM Engineering