Profitability maintained

The company specialises in manufacturing hose and pipe end fittings for brake, fuel, oil and coolant assemblies used in the motorsport and defence sectors.

Although in a strong financial position, Vire operates in a price-sensitive industry. Additional plant to fulfil a new contract has to make economic sense, which is why the company's latest purchase was a used Traub lathe supplied by Geo Kingsbury Machine Tools, sole UK agent for the German manufacturer.

Vire's managing director, Janet Vincent, explains: “We succeeded in obtaining business from a UK company supplying fittings to a US customer that wanted aluminium fittings of larger diameter than our existing lathes could accommodate, so we needed a new machine.

“The difficulty we faced was the low unit cost of the fittings, which led us at the outset to install a relatively inexpensive, new lathe so that the investment was proportionate to the profit margin. However, the machine proved to be unreliable and service was poor.

“We already had two Traub CNC lathes from Geo Kingsbury, who heard of the trouble we were having and undertook to keep their eyes open for a good quality, used mill/turn centre of larger capacity that would meet our budget and reliability requirements.”

Such a machine was found in Germany. It was a Traub TNC65 twin spindle, twin turret turning centre fitted with an LNS Quick Load Servo automatic bar magazine. Total cost was £165,000, around half of the price of a new lathe. The Geo Kingsbury engineer that vetted the machine at the German user – a subcontractor specialising in machining aluminium – was impressed with the good condition of the lathe and recommended it to Vire.

After refurbishment by Geo Kingsbury at its Gosport technical centre, the machine was installed at Totnes in mid 2009 and has run 24/7 ever since, transforming production of titanium, stainless steel, mild steel, and aluminium fittings up to 65mm diameter.

Whereas previously Ms Vincent would arrive at work in the morning to see typically one basket of parts produced by the previous lathe during a 12 hour night shift, she now sees three, due to the machine's higher productivity levels.
Admittedly this is due in part to the Traub having two turrets, whereas the former lathe had only one. However, reliability is another major factor, allowing the TNC65 to run uninterrupted throughout the night. Additionally, the superior mill/turning capability of the machine allows some parts to be finished in a single cycle, whereas previously they required a second operation.

One hit machining also reduces handling damage, helps to keep track of jobs more effectively and allows faster deliveries of non-stock items.

At the outset, when all parts produced on the machine were new and required programming, the sheer speed of the TNC65 could be a problem for Vire's operators. With batch sizes tending to be smaller these days, it was sometimes difficult to prepare the program for the next production run before the previous batch was finished. This is less of an issue now that a significant proportion of throughput is repeat work.

Traub's WinCNC software running on a PC is used for offline programming from customers' drawings. Geo Kingsbury provided one weeks' training as part of the package, as the TNC65 is the subcontractor's first twin turret machine.
More than 200 programs were written by Vire in the first six months, although this is less than 10% of the total number of fitting varieties produced at Totnes, such is the diversity of products that are delivered in short time scales to customers around the world.

Geo Kingsbury
www.gkholdings.com