Totally turnkey

“We cannot disclose names because the very nature of what we are offering necessitates customer confidentiality,” explains Hyfore joint managing director Gary Dickenson. “But the very fact we have invested in two additional machining centres and a state-of-the-art CMM inspection facility is indicative of how popular the service has already become.”

Key to the success story has been the all-important integration of skills and design and manufacturing services which lead to savings and efficiencies down the line.

“Hyfore’s traditional skills are in designing and manufacturing turnkey workholding, jigs and fixturing systems,” Mr Dickenson explains, “with our precision manufacturing capabilities in line with accredited ISO9001:2008 standards.

“Increasingly, by becoming involved with customers from the earliest product concept stage, we are able to advise on the most efficient component handling and machining techniques. Customers tell us that prototyping can be very disruptive, time consuming and costly but now, by delegating the design and development of fixturing and workholding from the outset to us, Hyfore can deliver a proven solution in what is effectively a turnkey project.

“By taking the processes a few stages further we develop fixtures and workholding and then prove out machining programmes on (effectively) production tooling,” he adds. “We also write the programmes to support the process so that when we hand over to the customer for actual manufacturing, we can supply like for like production tooling with proven programmes both for metalcutting and CMM.”

From its own experience Hyfore can recall a scenario where in order to make 25 prototypes on its own machines, a customer had to take part of a line out, strip it down, re-tool and programme and then put it all back together. It cost five days of production whereas Hyfore produced a similar batch faster, at considerably less cost and without disruption to the mainstream manufacturing.

Currently Hyfore is working on a project that will ultimately involve manufacturing over 120 fixtures. Everything are being proven out in Coventry were Hyfore has designed the prove-out tooling, is undertaking the prototype manufacturing and has written all of the machining programmes.

Once signed off by the customer these will be transferred into the production environment saving significant cost and being delivered in a near ready to machine process.

To upgrade its manufacturing and inspection to accommodate the volumes of new work, Hyfore has purchased two Quaser VMCs – an MV 235 and MV 184 – from the capital equipment division of its parent ETG and also a new Mitutoyo CMM.

The Quaser MV range of vertical machining centres offer high-speed, high power machining and a rigid cast iron frame with large X and Y travels in a compact footprint. The large machining envelopes make them ideal for Hyfore’s prototyping environment allowing the proving out of programmes on sizeable workpieces.

As well as its new investment Hyfore operates a further four CNC machining centres and is predominantly self-contained with its own deep-hole drillers, high capacity jig borers and large grinders.

Hyfore Engineering www.hyfore.com