Team effort

The ongoing investment at Mollart-Cox Engineering has recently seen the deep hole drilling specialist move to 50,000ft² premises and invest over £1 million in plant and peripheral equipment in the last 12 months.

Part of the technology investment at the Chesterfield-based company includes two deep hole boring machines with a third on order and three CNC turning centres. The successful and productive operation of its drilling machine is a combination of extensive experience in the industry and drilling heads designed and manufactured by HartHill Developments of Sheffield with inserts from TaeguTec.

With core skills centred around turning, drilling, honing and general subcontract machining for the oil and gas, medical, aerospace and automotive sectors, the company has been working with HartHill Developments since its inception in 1995 as managing director John Cox recalls: “Like all businesses, starting up can be a difficult time and HartHill gave us extended payment and credit terms to help us through the difficult period. Twelve years later we still have a great relationship with HartHill because they always strive to bring us cost reductions and exceptional products.”

Working in industry sectors synonymous with difficult to machine materials, Mollart-Cox machines mild steel, stainless steel, Inconel, titanium and non magnetic steels using its drilling heads to good effect. According to director, Jeff Armitage, one particular drilling head supplied by HartHill provided excellent results: “We can drill components from 25mm to 200mm diameter holes up to 4m deep and with finish honing achieve a tolerance of 0.05mm over this length. Working to this type of accuracy we have to employ the right type of drilling heads and the HartHill and TaeguTec combination has served us well. The most recent head we acquired was changed from a competitor head because we had consistency issues.

“The new drilling head is machining holes to size consistently and the need to change inserts has fallen dramatically – credit to the tool life of the TaeguTec inserts,” he adds. “The drilling head and inserts have improved swarf clearance and performed far more consistently than anything else we have used.

“Quality and productivity are two essential aspects of the production facility at Mollart-Cox. We machine large billets that are often beyond two tonnes and over 4m in length and there is no room for waste here. With our drilling heads however we are confident in the performance of the tools.

“Beside performance, reaction time is a crucial part of our business and to this end we have an overhead cranage of 10 tons with 14 deep hole drilling and boring spindles at our disposal 24 hours a day. We pride ourselves on fast response times and this is mirrored by HartHill. Overall we have the confidence that we can react to any situation.”

Taegutec
www.taegutec.co.uk Mollart-Cox
www.mollartcox.co.uk Harthill Developments
www.harthill.com