Boring capacity increased at Hone-All Precision
1 min read
Hone-All Precision has completed an extensive upgrading and refurbishment of its four deep hole boring machines to provide an additional 20 per cent production capacity.
Demand for the company's specialist machining expertise, especially from the aerospace and energy sectors, is such that the refurbishment programme had to be spread over several months to avoid any disruption to delivery schedules.
Before refurbishing its largest deep hole boring machine, which now has a completely new headstock, it was necessary to extend the capacity of the next largest machine to maintain Hone-All's overall 3 m length deep hole boring capability.
Since then swarf conveyors have been either upgraded or new ones fitted to all four deep hole borers, together with new drive motors and coolant pumps, and the opportunity has also been taken to fully refurbish an existing Endomatic facing and centering machine.
Andrea Rodney, co-director, commented: "The outcome has been a significant increase in deep hole boring capacity, which is good news for our customers as it will have a very positive impact on lead times. Our next step is to select and install a new CNC horizontal honing machine to provide additional capacity in the honing section as this will eliminate any possibility of a future production bottleneck."
Using specialised drilling heads and indexable tooling to bore holes up to 200 mm diameter, Hone-All can achieve close tolerances (±0.01 mm for bores under 76.2 mm diameter), accuracy of 0.025 mm per 25.4 mm depth and good surface finish – which can be further improved by honing to, typically, 0.05 µm.