Grinding revelation

Marlor Tooling
Marlor Tooling

Peterborough-based Marlor Tooling, a cutting tool manufacturer preparing to celebrate its 50th  anniversary, has invested in a Rollomatic Shapesmart CNC tool grinding machine.

Peterborough-based Marlor Tooling, a cutting tool manufacturer preparing to celebrate its 50th anniversary, has invested in a Rollomatic Shapesmart CNC tool grinding machine.


Marlor was founded by George Taylor, formerly an engineer working at the nearby Perkins Engines plant. After seizing an opportunity, he started up his own company offering subcontract engineering services to Perkins – a relationship that remains strong today.

The company grew over a number of years before George’s son, Kevin, started up the tool manufacturing side of the business around 25 years ago. Marlor tooling has since moved several times to larger units on the same industrial estate in Peterborough with the family ethos of continual investment in the latest technology remaining the same today as it was 50 years ago.

Still a privately-owned family business, Marlor is now located in a modern production facility. It has 12 CNC tool and cutter grinding machines at its disposal plus EDM, drilling and inspection capabilities. Marlor is somewhat different to many UK tool manufacturers in that nearly all of its sales are to other tool manufacturers with very few to end-users.

Martyn Cross, works director at Marlor explains: “After identifying a production bottleneck we looked at many CNC cylindrical grinding machines over the past few years but couldn’t find a machine that suited our requirements to produce cutting tool blanks efficiently,” explains Martyn Cross, works director at Marlor.

“We needed fast set-up times and flexibility for small to medium batches of tools and while we considered looking at Rollomatic, our perception at the time was that their machines were only suitable for high volume production.”

However, Mr Cross’ changed his mind after seeing the Rollomatic NP3+ grinding machine at MACH 2018 when it was exhibited for the first time in the UK on the Advanced Grinding Solutions stand. A subsequent full demonstration clinched the deal and an order was placed.

Marlor initially looked at the NP3+ in its most basic configuration – which would have solved it’s manufacturing conundrums – but after seeing how quickly blanks could be programmed and ground after manual loading or otherwise quickly set-up for unmanned running with full auto-loading, the company took a different approach and investigated all available options.

Out went Mr Cross’ initial plan of primarily manufacturing small batch special blanks as he looked to move operations from other machines to fully utilise the easy to set auto loader during the night while manufacturing low quantity special tools during the day.

He states that the quality, surface finish and repeatability from the machine is excellent, while the extended wheel life and dressing frequencies have been a revelation. “Cycle times have been dramatically reduced,” he reports. “One example of a long length through-coolant drill for an aerospace application used to take seven minutes; now it takes just two minutes on the Rollomatic.”

In quantifying improvements in quality, Marlor has found that the Rollomatic machine easily holds tolerances of 3µm on tool diameters over larger batches of tools. Previously this was simply unachievable.

Issues finding highly skilled engineers with grinding experience was another justification for purchasing the Rollomatic NP3. After taking an operator unfamiliar with CNC grinding to Rollomatic for training; inside two weeks later he was using the simple Rollomatic P4Smart software to grind complex blanks unassisted.

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 machine has been improved to offer even more advantages for fast set-ups and superior grinding quality including both rough and finish grinding in a single automatic operation for diameters up to 25mm. A Renishaw probe handles length positioning whilst a Marposs gauge is available for the post process gauging of diameters enabling tool concentricity of under 0.001mm.

“We’ve come to rely on the Rollomatic machine and I don’t know how we managed without one for so long,” Mr Cross concludes. “The three-year parts and labour guarantee and the excellent technical and service support has given us complete confidence that we have purchased the very best grinding machine for our requirements.

“The NP3+ has contributed to a halving of production lead-times, allowed rapid response for urgent jobs needing CNC cylindrical grinding, and has let us take back full control by bringing in all manufacture of tool blank grinding in-house.”

Advanced Grinding Solutions www.advancedgrindingsolutions.co.uk

Marlor Tooling www.marlor.co.uk

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