Group member, LoneStar Leeds specialises in the manufacture of products such as valve gates, stems, seats and metallic seals. In addition to the global oil and gas industry, LoneStar Leeds serves several equally challenging sectors, including the petrochemical, power generation and renewable energy markets.
To enable the delivery of the highest levels of quality, precision and efficiency the company’s team of skilled engineers has access to a range of advanced manufacturing technologies. In addition to CNC turning, surface grinding, wire eroding and honing facilities, Lonestar’s West Yorkshire manufacturing facility houses 13 machining centres, consisting of vertical, horizontal and twin pallet machines with capacities of up to 2,300mm x 800mm and a maximum loadbearing capability of 1,000kg.
Like all such oil and gas related manufacturing businesses, LoneStar was hit by the global downturn in the industry in 2014, although, over the past five years, the company has experienced a spectacular recovery.
Welcome as this revival has been, the nature of LoneStar Leeds’ business has changed since the 2014 oil industry slump. As the company’s production runs are now shorter than those undertaken pre-2014, to ensure the best possible levels of efficiency whilst manufacturing smaller batches, the LoneStar management has been busy exploring ways of minimising job changeover times and searching for ways of maximising the available productive times at the company’s manufacturing plant.
In addition to employing methods such as making sure that, at the end of each production run, comprehensive kits, consisting of cutting tools and all other necessary ancillary equipment are instantly available for the next job, investments have also been made in new workholding equipment that further reduces job changeover times and increases production efficiencies.
LoneStar Leeds’ managing director Jon Collinge explains: “As the markets we operate in are extremely competitive, we are always seeking ways of ensuring that our machine tools are able to reach their full productive potential. In addition, given the potential economic and environmental cost of failure of any of the products we manufacture, the quality of our output is paramount.
“As Stewart Whiteman, the managing director of our sealing division had reaped the benefits of using Thame Workholding products, he was happy to recommend the company to me.
“Having invited Thame Workholding’s sales engineer, Tony Lewis to visit our site he recommended an effective workholding solution for a series of soon to be manufactured thin walled parts with challenging specifications. This is Thame Workholding’s InoTop jaw system which proved to be the perfect solution for securely holding our thin walled parts without causing deformation and for achieving the best possible roundness results. In addition, the use of the InoTop jaw system speeded-up production in this potentially problematic area.
“As the InoTop jaw system ensured quick set-ups and resulted in the production of high-quality parts, it satisfied our twin aims of continually improving our manufacturing efficiencies and ensuring the consistent production of quality parts,” Mr Collinge continued.
“Given the elimination of scrap and the significant time savings we now achieve on our regular thin walled machining jobs, our InoTop jaw system is now ahead of schedule on its projected return on investment.
“Its success means that we have since invited Tony Lewis to look at several of our other machine tool applications. His recommendations and our subsequent purchases of additional Thame Workholding products have enabled us to achieve further efficiencies and helped us to uphold our demanding quality standards.”
Tony Lewis of Thame Workholding explains: “As engineers throughout the world use cost-effective InoTop jaw systems to clamp deformation sensitive parts that would otherwise prove troublesome to machine accurately, I was confident that the system was the ideal solution to LoneStar Leeds’ quest for improved machining efficiencies.
“Working on the principle of centring the workpiece on its outside diameter without the application of pressure, then clamping from the inside diameter, InoTop prevents unwanted polygon formations in the clamping process and results in the efficient production of high-quality parts.”
Thame Workholding www.thameworkholding.com
