Matsuura Machinery's VIP Open House at its Coalville, Leicestershire headquarters (01530 511 400) aimed to overcome the hesitation in many industries caused by the election, the EU and declines in oil and gas activity. "The negativity of the past six months is dissipating," says commercial manager Simon Burrow. He says that aerospace markets are benefitting from single-aisle aircraft orders, positivity in motorsport, automotive and R&D operations. "The feel is good: people are ready to get back to business. We know that buying our machines is not an easy decision; these are significant investments."
Partly what he means is that the company's speciality is providing high capacity production machines. For example, its most popular model, the 5-axis vertical machining centre MAM 72-35V, incorporates an automated 32-station pallet rack system (diameter: 130 mm) plus a chain-based or expandable automatic toolchanger with capacity of 60-520 tools to enable the cutting of a large variety of workpieces almost continuously. The same concept has been repeated with scaled up pallet sizes: to 300 mm with up to 24 pallets (MAM72-42V), 500 mm with up to 12 pallets (MAM72-63V) and, on a horizontal spindle machine, 630 mm with up to six pallets (MAM72-100H). Much more numerous pallet systems can be integrated with a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) incorporating a robot-based automatic part changer; the company works with ABB Robotics (01908 350300; see also link below).
High capacity, lights-out machining is also run of the mill for the five H.Plus 4-axis horizontal machining centres (they incorporate a 360º B-axis turntable), designed without flat surfaces inside the machining envelope to improve swarf removal and with built-in automation intelligence; there is a broken tool detector, automatic probing for datums, and automatic remote messaging to alert on-call staff. Refreshed versions of two models, the H.Plus-405 (500 mm diameter pallet) and H.Plus-500 (also with 500 mm diameter pallet), are due before the end of the year.
At the other end of the scale, the smallest Matsuura machines, the MX-520 and MX-850, both 5-axis, thanks to an A-axis trunnion with rotating C-axis pallet, offer greater machining capability for customers that are moving beyond 3-axis processing of parts up to 520 and 850 mm diameter. Both machines were shown at the Open House surrounded by parts made on them by customers Globe Engineering (MX-520) and Hewland Engineering (MX-850).
Sales of these machines strategically reinforce those of their larger siblings, states Burrow: they either provide extra machining capability for existing customers, or help Matsuura get a foot in the door ("No-one buys just one Matsuura," he says).
Matsuura Machinery mainly focuses on larger scale engineered solutions (not only Matsuura, incidentally, but also large machining centres from Japanese manufacturers Niigata and SNK, plus turning centres from Muratec and, from the Czech republic's Toshulin). Indeed, the firm, wholly owned by Matsuura Machinery Corp, does not aspire to be a volume supplier, only looking for a small percentage of all machine tool sales in the UK per year. Other important revenue streams (and sites of investment) for the 68-person company are scheduled service, spindle repair and application engineering.
Service is organised like automobile repair, but carried out every six months because utilisation rates are so high. The company supports a modest customer fleet, due to the low-volume nature of its business model. A team of travelling engineers with access to UK spares stocks undertake the repairs. In addition to housing a showroom and offices, the Coalville headquarters is the European warehouse for parts, storing 18,000 items and more than 100 spindles for models up to 20 years old; it also operates a Class 1000 spindle build and refurbishment facility for Europe. Also on site is a rolling stock of new machines, held to reduce delivery times.
