Citizen and Jemtech form technical partnership
1 min read
Citizen Machinery UK and Jemtech (UK) have formed a technical partnership to foster and improve customer applications and, in particular, operational development involving difficult-to-machine materials on Citizen sliding head lathes and Miyano fixed head turning centres. The partnership follows several applications over the past two years when Jemtech and Citizen Machinery have worked together on customer projects.
Says Edward James, Citizen's technical manager: "We have relationships with key technical partners to help and support us in a very competitive market. It means we can supply a machine tool and put forward the most appropriate solution to meet customer needs. In particular, the raw material can present a host of problems to achieve a consistent and predictable cutting operation, and here coolant, its filtration and delivery plays a significant part in the overall solution."
A recent trial involved setting up a benchmark using premium cutting tools with an existing supplier's coolant. The 32 mm stainless steel bar was faced, contour-turned and faced-out, which involved 30 passes to create, in effect, a top hat shaped component which was finally parted-off. After just 20 components the surface of the component started to degrade, which quickly led to insert failure.
Following cleaning of the machine and coolant tank, Jemtech's engineer refilled the machine with Blaser Vascomill 10, a natural vegetable neat oil. The machine was then reset using the same cutting data. So significant was the improvement that even after 480 components there was no loss of surface finish. In fact, the trial concluded here as Citizen had run out of material.
"As the Blaser fluid is chlorine- and sulphur-free, there were very low levels of misting and it was resistant to vapour formation and foaming," says James. "This, we feel, is essential when high coolant pressures are being used. And, due to the viscosity of the vegetable-based oil, there was very little carryover to be lost with swarf – parts were cleaner and dryer. This adds to the economics of producing complex, multi-featured components in a single operational cycle.
"We now have significant potential to improve our applications support to customers because we have the support of a knowledgeable field-based team from Jemtech (UK), as well as access to research and development information and the Blaser Swisslube test centre in Switzerland," he concludes.
