Having completed an extensive upgrading and refurbishment of four deep hole boring machines, Hone-All Precision is now investing more than £200,000 in upgrading its specialist honing capability.
This involves revamping part of its 20,000ft² factory to accommodate two additional honing machines, without disrupting the Leighton Buzzard subcontractor's carefully planned process flow.
The first of the two latest acquisitions to join an existing Sunnen GV3 series vertical honing machine is a 2m stroke HTB-2000S PLC horizontal tube honing machine initially supplied by Sunnen Products on a loan basis. “While waiting on delivery of a new custom built hone, our plan was to avoid a potential bottleneck resulting from the significant increase in our deep hole boring capability,” explained Andrea Rodney, Hone-All Precision co-director. “However, it proved to be a classic case of ‘we liked the machine so much, we bought it'.”
Hemel Hempstead-based Sunnen offers a comprehensive range of precision honing systems, as well as systems with automated parts loading and in-process or post-process gauging. “Hone-All was fortunate in that we had a machine of a suitable size available for loan and, of course, we always do our best to help our customers,” said Julian Hooper, Sunnen's managing director. “It made an immediate impact within the customer's honing section and we were very pleased when Hone-All decided on the additional purchase of this smaller honing machine.”
Installed in June 2011, the second, larger, machine is a 3m stroke HTC-3000W CNC horizontal tube hone which has a touchscreen control contributing to step-by-step set-up times of less than two minutes. HTC series machines also feature a tool expansion and feed system capable of maintaining close size and surface finish specifications. A major incentive for both investments is the growing demand for 28 employee Hone-All's tight tolerance machining expertise from aerospace and energy sector customers.
Using specialised drilling heads and indexable tooling to bore holes up to 200mm diameter, Hone-All is able to achieve close tolerances, excellent accuracy and good surface finish – which is then further improved by honing to, typically, 0.05µm. General machining capacity, which includes milling, turning, grinding, gundrilling and EDM drilling, extends to components up to 300mm diameter by 3m long.
Hone-All
www.hone-all.co.uk
