Marlor enters medical tools market with Rollomatic tool grinder

One of the UK’s leading cutting tool manufacturers, Peterborough-based Marlor Tooling is continuing to benefit from purchasing a Rollomatic Shapesmart CNC tool grinding machine as it expands its sales into the medical tool and instrument markets.

A privately-owned, second-generation family business, Marlor is located in a state-of-the-art new production facility and has 12 CNC tool and cutter grinding machines plus various other CNC machines including EDM, drilling and inspection machines at its disposal.

Marlor is perhaps unique amongst UK tool manufacturers in that nearly all of its sales are to other tool manufacturers. Sales to end-users are rare.

Martyn Cross, works director at Marlor, explains that after identifying a production bottleneck the company looked at many CNC cylindrical grinding machines on numerous occasions over the last three or four years with the need for fast set-up times and flexibility to make high precision tools before opting to purchase the Rollomatic MP3+ machine.

“The Rollomatic is possibly the most transformative machine purchase that we have ever made,” he enthuses. “Small or large batches of tools are now all done in house with an incredible surface finish and holding the tightest of tolerances.”

The Rollomatic machine has enabled Marlor to enter the medical tool blank market for the first time and several high value orders have been secured – including a batch of 300-off tools that was produced automatically under lights out conditions overnight using the Rollomatic’s fully integrated robot loader.

Mr Cross was delighted with the quality achieved that was well within the desired tolerances across the entire batch of medical parts with cycle times from solid bar being under eight minutes.

Marlor is able to fully utilise the easy to set auto loader for lights out production while manufacturing lower quantity special tools during the day. He makes special mention of the high-quality, surface finish and repeatability of the work the machine produces, as well as the extended wheel life and reduced dressing frequency.

Cycle times have been dramatically slashed, with Marlor citing another example of a long length through-coolant drill for an aerospace application that took seven minutes to produce previously and now takes just two minutes on the Rollomatic machine. In addition, the machine can easily hold tolerances of under 3µm on tool diameters over larger batches.

Rollomatic’s ShapeSmart machines are designed for grinding tool blanks and similar stepped cylindrical components and are based on the method of peel grinding; a technology invented by Rollomatic. This new generation of cylindrical grinding machines has been improved to offer even more advantages for fast set-ups and high quality rough and finishing grinding in a single automatic operation for diameters up to 25mm with a Renishaw probe handling length positioning.

“In the months since its installation, we’ve come to rely on the Rollomatic machine and it has completely transformed out business,” Mr Cross concludes. “The three-year parts and labour guarantee and the excellent technical and service support we’ve received has given us complete confidence that we have purchased the very best grinding machine for our requirements.

“The NP3+ has contributed to a significant saving on production lead-times, allowed rapid response for urgent jobs needing CNC cylindrical grinding, and has allowed us to take full control of our blank grinding processes by bringing manufacturing back in-house.”

Rollomatic machines are represented in the UK by Advanced Grinding Solutions based in Coventry.

Marlor Tooling www.marlor.co.uk

Advanced Grinding Solutions www.advancedgrindingsolutions.co.uk

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