Its plastic fantastic for Leeds based parts supplier having invested in XYZ Bed Mill
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Manufacturing parts that are used in everything from bakeries and canning lines to sub sea submersibles, betting shops and poodle parlours, Leeds based Industrial Plastics Supplies produce a range of products that are used in some of the unlikeliest of places and are now aided in their production of parts with the acquisition of a new XYZ RMX 4000 Bed Mill.
Over the last 40 years since the company was established, Chris Luty and his team have forged a niche in being able to produce plastic parts for a vast array of clients. With an established machine shop consisting of manual mills and lathes, a turning centre and routers, they still felt that they needed something extra to assist their production having investigated how much they were spending on sub-contract machining.
“The need to invest in a CNC milling machine came after we had looked at our costing and lead times when sending work out” observes Chris. “Although we have the 2 routers, there is a limitation on how thick the material is that we can cut on those machines which, in turn, left us no choice but to put the work out. Having done the sums, we decided we should investigate purchasing a machine to do these larger jobs ourselves”.
For some advice Chris turned to Gary Haxby, who used to do work for Industrial Plastics Supplies as a sub-contractor himself but, after a period away from the world of machining, was looking to get back on the machines. Chris continues “because Gary knew the type of work we did we asked for his opinion on where we should focus our search for a milling machine and if he would like to join our team”.
Having had several XYZ machines himself in the past, Gary had no hesitation in suggesting that XYZ Machine Tools would be a great place to start. “We contacted XYZ and John Brimblecome, XYZ’s Area Salesman for the northeast of England, came in to see us straight away. John took the time to look at the work we do and even gave us some estimations on how long some of the parts we wanted to produce would take to machine on the XYZ Bed Mills” says Chris.
This was followed up with a visit to the XYZ Huddersfield showroom where Chris and Gary looked at the options available, and it also gave Gary the chance to catch up on the development changes on the ProtoTRAK RMX control fitted to the machines.
Chris mentions that “It was great to have a showroom local to us that we could have a good look at the machines we were interested in and help with the justification for the purchase”. Gary adds “Although we thought it would be great to go for a RMX 5000 machine, which would give us more travel in the X axis, after visiting the showroom we decided to go for the RMX 4000 which was partly due to space in the workshop. It still provided 1060mm of X travel but more importantly there was no reduction of Y axis travel at 596mm across the 2 models. It was also fantastic for us that the machines have the same spindle power of 7.5hp (5.75kW) delivering to the ISO 40 spindle through a 2-speed head, which ensures the cutting capability is vastly superior to the routing machines we already have”.
But due to the nature of the parts produced at Industrial Plastic Supplies, once the machine was installed there became other obstacles to overcome. Gary continues “there are times that we need to machine the complete thickness of the material without having a second operation. Holding the parts in a standard vice arrangement is not an option. This led us to creating our own vacuum generator to hold the parts and machine them in one operation. This along with the benefits the ProtoTRAK RMX has brought along is all helping with production time reduction. The machine moving at 10 m/min rapid has reduced our non-cutting times down tremendously and the defaults feature in the ProtoTRAK that allows me to set the machine up for the way I want to work is great. It fills in some of the prompts automatically in the conversational programming and helps minimise any mistakes as I enter data in. But still one of the greatest things on the ProtoTRAK control is the TRAKing feature. That ability to wind the handles that in turn run the program is so confidence inspiring. I must admit I am still getting to grips with the DXF convertor that allows us to open electronic drawings on the control but, having seen it used at the showroom I know it’s going to add another element of efficiency”.
Although the machine has only been installed for a matter of months, Chris states” we are already seeing the benefits of investing in the XYZ RMX 4000. Our sub-contracting cost have dropped dramatically, and we are now getting the parts we required for our customers when we need them putting us in full control of our production schedule. Gary put us on the right track with looking at XYZ products and having seen the gains we have had with the RMX 4000 we need to look at other areas of our production to see if XYZ products can give us the same production improvements”.
