It’s been all change here at BearingProTools over the past year! I’m amazed at how the time has flown by, and excited for what the future holds.
At the very end of last year we moved to a new workshop, a necessary step to facilitate what was to come next.
After a month or so of fit out the new workshop was ready for the main event, the arrival of a brand-new CNC lathe.
As luck would have it the delivery was made on the coldest day of the year, and believe me, it’s not easy to manoeuvre a 4.5 tonne machine over a frozen car park and up the slight incline into the workshop in -8degC.
For those out there how share my fascination with machine tools, here are the specs: DN Solutions (Doosan) Lynx 2100 LSYB lathe, 65mm main spindle/chuck bore, 12 station turret with 24 indexing positions, Renishaw tool setter, live tooling, 25bar through-tool coolant, Y-axis machining and the all-important sub-spindle. The lathe is equipped with a bar feeder, swarf conveyor, parts catcher/conveyor and a Novec fire suppression system.
The goal when speccing and fitting out the machine was to be able to feed raw bars in at one end and have finished parts coming out of the machine at the other end, with enough automation and reliability to give us the confidence to leave the CNC running unattended overnight.
I would happily talk all day about CNCs and machining strategies, but to get to the important bit, what does this investment in equipment mean for our customers?
In short, it will enable us to improve the quality, sophistication and features of our existing tools, and expand our range to include new tool types. We’ve been accumulating ideas for years now, but, due to constraints in our existing manufacturing, were unable to realise all the developments that we wanted to. The new CNC greatly expands our capabilities.
We’ll be rolling out updated designs over the coming months. Keep in touch here for updates as things progress!