Editor’s comment: September 2017

Maintenance contracts on equipment are absolutely necessary in today’s fast paced manufacturing environment. Few companies could afford a breakdown that could seriously jeopardise production.

It’s tough enough to win business in a highly competitive marketplace; the last thing companies need are lead-times pushed out due to failing machines. It’s an insurance policy at the end of the day, just like on washing machines and boilers. A necessary evil some may say, but worth their weight in gold for manufacturing companies. Time is money after all.

So, when workholding specialist Rohm asked me to visit one of its customers – Kawasaki Precision Machinery (KPM) – in Plymouth, to talk about a maintenance contract, I was suitably intrigued – because this wasn’t for a brand new 99-axis, all singing, all dancing £1 million machine tool, it was for a chuck!

But this is no ordinary chuck. This is a custom designed 500mm diameter 4 x 90° indexing chuck with its own hydraulic/electrical power pack featuring 20 individual functions monitoring and controlling the indexing process. It cost KPM a whopping £70,000 back in 1998, but since then it’s been running for a minimum of two shifts a day, indexing three times an hour, 18-24 hours a day, five days a week. In all that time there’s never been a single unplanned breakdown.

Why? Because Jim Huse, Rohm’s service engineer makes a two-day pilgrimage to the Plymouth site every year and services the chuck from top to bottom. Amazingly, Jim carried out the original installation nearly 20 years ago, and every year since then he’s serviced the chuck during KPM’s summer shutdown to keep it running like clockwork.

I enjoyed doing this story. Apart from the geographic merits of visiting Plymouth during the summer months, this was a different angle from the norm and real-life proof that if you look after your equipment, it’ll serve you well. Incidentally, the chuck ‘lives’ on a well-maintained Hitachi Seiki HiTec Turn 40G turning centre which was purchased at about the same time and is still also performing flawlessly. Take a look at the full article on page 36.

Dave Tudor Editor