Managing director Gary Dickenson explains: “Hyfore’s traditional skills are in designing and manufacturing turnkey workholding, jigs and fixturing systems. Increasingly, by becoming involved with customers from the earliest product concept stage, we are able to advise on the most efficient component handling and machining techniques.
“Customers tell us that prototyping can be very disruptive, time consuming and costly but now, by delegating to us the design and development of fixturing and workholding from the outset, Hyfore can deliver a proven solution in what is effectively a turnkey project.
“By taking the processes a few stages further we develop fixtures and workholding and then prove out machining programmes on (effectively) production tooling. We also write the programmes to support the process so that when we hand over to the customer for actual manufacturing, we can supply like-for-like production tooling with proven programmes both for metalcutting and CMM [inspection].”
For example, Hyfore recalls the experience of a customer that spent five days of production making 25 prototypes: it took part of a manufacturing line out, stripped it down, retooled and reprogrammed it, made the parts, and then put it all back together. Hyfore produced a similar batch faster, at considerably less cost and without disruption to the mainstream manufacturing.
Currently Hyfore is working on a project that will ultimately involve manufacturing more than 120 fixtures. All are being proven out in Coventry with bespoke, Hyfore-designed tooling and programming. Once signed off by the customer, they will be transferred into the production environment, saving significant cost and being delivered in a near ready-to-machine process.
As well as its new investment, Hyfore operates a further four CNC machining centres and deep-hole drilling machines, high capacity jig borers and large grinders.