Success on a global scale

These main orders taken in April are from existing North American and Chinese customers and have all been won against strong European and US competitors largely based on existing track records of previous applications and proven installations.

Says managing director Ian Petitt: “We were judged against most major competitors in our sector. However, what became a major factor in each of the orders won was the proven overall machine reliability of Mollart’s installations and utilisation that has been maintained over extended periods of time. Our reputation for application development and levels of productivity aided by our German specialist tooling partner Botek were also important factors.”

An order from one of the largest independent automotive manufacturers in North America worth some £2.5 million will see Mollart supply four special purpose four- and six-spindle gundrilling centres for producing oil galleries in transmission shafts used in the latest generation of fuel efficient nine- and10-speed gearboxes.

“We have now installed 31 gundrilling machines with this company with some being repeat orders and others involving specialist application engineering,” Mr Petitt explains. Mollart’s first order from the customer, worth almost £10 million, was placed in 2014 at the IMTS exhibition in Chicago.

A further US order taken by Mollart is for a Prismabore PRB 25 6-axis combination gundrilling and machining centre. The machine is to be used for the deep hole drilling of cooling holes in steel moulds at a US mould specialist.

The machine has a ‘single-cycle’ capability to perform conventional drilling, counterboring, milling, tapping and thread milling processes. Significant in the specification of the hybrid-type machine design is the use of a heavy-duty CAT-50 spindle and the added flexibility provided by its 90-tool magazine.

Bringing the success of its gundrilling installations in the fuel injection sector in China to 60, Mollart has orders for a further two-spindle Drillsprint LD2-750 machine to drill holes between 7mm and 10mm diameter by 600mm deep in forged alloy steel diesel fuel rails.

The Drillsprint series of machines have proven to be central in several customer world programmes for producing fuel injection equipment across Europe and Asia.

Mollart www.mollart.com