For its biopharmaceutical and pharmaceutical customers, the Mullingar, Co Westmeath-based firm’s equipment supports the latest NG range of tablet feeders, blister pack tooling, pharmaceutical packaging design, tablet and booklet feeding systems, bespoke wash racks for sterile fill parts and format change parts for solid dose blister packing. Customers are blue-chip names within the industry, such as GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Eli Lilly and Pfizer.
ISO 9001:2008-accredited TEG supplies machinery parts in low numbers, while blister pack tooling in aluminium or stainless steel and the associated hardened steel cutting and perforating tools are made in ones and twos. Aerospace, too, is a small lot size activity.
Bearing in mind the relatively low volumes of production for both medical and aerospace work, when the company went looking for appropriate CNC machinery, importance was placed on speed of programming on the shopfloor to minimise set-up times and maintain productivity. The proprietary single-screen Max and twin-screen Ultimax (now WinMax) controls from Hurco (01494 442222) were considered ahead of other conversational CNC systems on the market.
As it happens, TEG’s founder, Tommy Kelly, was already familiar with the Hurco equipment, having used machining centres and lathes from the company when he held senior manufacturing positions in previous companies.
John Hunt, joint owner and managing director of TEG, explains: “Virtually since the start, Hurco machine tools have been the backbone of our company’s growth and success. Our bespoke service, rapid turnaround times and competitive prices can only be fulfilled if the spindles on our shopfloor are running for a high proportion of the time. Hurco machines ensure that this happens. A majority of our components are programmed conversationally in WinMax at the controls on the shopfloor and are into production very quickly.”
In the case of smaller, less complicated parts, the machines can be cutting metal in a matter of minutes. For more complex components, entire cutting cycles or the more difficult elements within them are prepared off-line in one of TEG’s CAM systems and the program then downloaded to the Hurco controls.
Numerous Hurco 3-axis and 4-axis prismatic machining centres have been installed at the Mullingar factory since the company’s establishment, together with the manufacturer’s CNC turning equipment. With a policy of regularly replacing shopfloor plant, early machining centres have already been superseded by three of Hurco’s latest i-series models, which arrived in early 2015.
This article was first published in the September 2016 issue of Machinery magazine.
