A pedigree in precision

Metrology equipment from Mitutoyo is playing a leading role in maintaining quality standards for a Gloucestershire-based precision manufacturer. PES reports. 

Metrology equipment from Mitutoyo is playing a leading role in maintaining quality standards for a Gloucestershire-based precision manufacturer. PES reports.

Based on a heritage site where Edwin Beard Budding invented the lawnmower in 1830 and the adjustable spanner in 1842, Impcross is a manufacturer that continues this tradition; branding its business as a 'world class centre of specialist precision engineering excellence'.

With a client list that includes world renowned aerospace OEMs such as Safran, GE, UTC, Messier Dowty, BAE Systems, NSK, Honeywell and Rolls-Royce, the Stroud-based manufacturer has always invested heavily in leading machine tool brands such as Mazak, Matsuura, Hitachi Seiki, Schaublin, Delapena and Studer. Since its inception back in 1994, there is one brand that has always remained a constant for the Gloucestershire company, metrology partner Mitutoyo.

Located on a 55,000ft² facility, the company has a rich history of manufacturing high-end components for the military, aerospace, F1, petrochemical and motorsport industries with a workflow that has, historically, been 75% prototype and small batch runs with 25% of production being long-run work.

However, the appointment of a new CEO to the family business, a strategic re-alignment and further investment has seen the company rapidly realise its aims of becoming 25% prototype and 75% production oriented whilst purely targeting the aerospace OEM sector – a strategy that is paying dividends with staff levels almost doubling in just five years.

To achieve long-term partnerships with the aerospace OEMs, Impcross has a long list of aerospace OEM accreditations – including AS9100 Rev D – as well as ISO:9001, NADCAP chemical processing and NDT approvals. Underpinning these accreditations is a lengthy plant list of Mitutoyo metrology equipment and quality management systems.

Commenting upon the partnership with Mitutoyo, Impcross operations director Steve Arnold says: "Not only has Impcross worked with Mitutoyo since its inception; my father and company founder Richard Arnold previously owned another business and he's worked with Mitutoyo since the 1960s. Mitutoyo has always served us with distinction, always had the technology to efficiently serve our needs, and as the industry and technology has evolved, Mitutoyo has always been at our side."

The plant list

Impcross is particularly proud of its employee retention rate with many of the staff in the metrology department serving an average of 20 years’ service. Mitutoyo has served Impcross similarly well over the years; the company has two coordinate measuring machines (CMMs), the BHN 706 and Euro C 7106 that have been onsite for 18 and 24 years respectively. With continual software updates, regular calibration and maintenance programs the machines are still used daily. With ongoing growth, Impcross is expecting imminent delivery of a third CMM, a Crysta Apex S7106.

Alongside the CMMs are Linear Height 600, 2D motorised height gauges, two PJ300 profile projectors, a number of Mitutoyo digital bore gauges, SJ401 surface measuring equipment, the Surf-Test 211, a Contracer CV4500H4 a Roundtest RA2200AH and numerous laser scan micrometers.

On a monthly basis, the Gloucestershire company will manufacture and first-off inspect over 500 different component types for its customers. To manufacture such a large variation of complex large-batch components, the company runs its machine shop and metrology department 24/5 with full traceability on its production and quality procedures.

Measurement challenges

Two years ago, Impcross won a contract to manufacture reverse thrust valve housings for a defence customer. To reduce weight, the housings are manufactured from aluminium. A critical feature on the housing is a thread that connects to a hose with a through pressure of 5,000psi.

Producing an aluminium part capable of accepting such pressure, the customer developed innovative thread geometry that was developed in conjunction with its tooling supplier prior to awarding the contract to Impcross. With thread forms tied to a tolerance less than 50µm, the OEM aerospace customer also supplied Impcross with a Mitutoyo Contracer CV-4500 to measure these challenging profiles.

“We work in partnership with our clients and this particular OEM customer even provided the Mitutoyo Contracer to guarantee conformity. From a conformity perspective, our Mitutoyo metrology equipment provides comprehensive reporting and many of our OEM partners also use Mitutoyo equipment, so they are all too familiar with the format, quality, consistency and reliability of the Mitutoyo reporting system. This particular housing is a critical aircraft component and the Contracer CV-4500 is responsible for checking every housing,” Mr Arnold explains.

Another critical component manufactured by Impcross is a valve sleeve guide that works in conjunction with the thrust valve housing. The stainless-steel sleeve guide has a cylindricity and parallelism tolerance in the bore of 1.2µm over the 127.7mm length with a surface finish tolerance of 0.006 to 0.008mm, or 2µm.

Machining a valve sleeve to such tight tolerances is a difficult task, something compounded by externally turned features that are all tied to a tolerance of 5µm. However this is not just a one-off job: Impcross manufactures 200+ sleeve guides every month. The company says inspecting these parts would have been impossible without the Mitutoyo Roundtest RA2200.

Commenting, Impcross quality inspector Matt Coopey says: “The sleeve guides are extremely challenging parts, but tight tolerance work is ingrained in our DNA. We believe the Roundtest RA2200 is the best product on the market that can measure these parts with an efficiency that enables us to produce hundreds of parts each month with 100% inspection requirements.”

Slick operation

With such high production output and stringent quality control processes that encompass SPC, CPK production, Lean, Kaizen and continuous improvement programs, the quality assurance department has to be as slick as the shop-floor production.

“All our metrology equipment utilises the latest software updates from Mitutoyo and there is complete conformity between our equipment, processes and reporting,” Mr Arnold advises. “Furthermore, we have the MCosmos Cat 1000 software integrated into our Mitutoyo metrology equipment which means we can download the CAD/CAM files for components from our servers directly to the Mitutoyo machines. In the case of the CMMs, we can download the model directly from our CAM software and set the datums on the CMM according to our models.

“This integration is a critical feature for the productivity of our metrology department. We have won an order for a family of gyroscope components for the defence industry high volume in batches of 50,000. To process the parts, our CMMs will use a grid fixture plate and apply SPC to record data for our client. The CMMs will regularly check more than 50 parts an hour and run 24 hours a day. With two existing CMMs that are 20 years old, this demonstrates the reliability and capability of the Mitutoyo product lines. The new CMM on order has been purchased to alleviate capacity issues, not replace the existing CMMs.”

He continues: “As a business, we have written our own quality software, designed failure out of our processes and risk analyse everything we do. As a business that captures data at every level, the Mitutoyo equipment has been integral to our success. Mitutoyo has been a reliable, consistent and high-quality supplier for so many years, we take their service and support levels for granted.

“What is equally important however is that fact that our aerospace OEM clients are reassured as soon as they know we have a quality assurance department filled with Mitutoyo equipment,” he concludes.

Mitutoyo (UK) www.mitutoyo.co.uk

Impcross www.impcross.co.uk

 

 

 

Company

Mitutoyo

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