Hone-All invests £200,000-plus in new honing machines

This latest move follows an extensive upgrading and refurbishment of four deep hole boring machines and involves revamping part of its 20,000 sq ft factory to accommodate two additional honing machines, without disrupting the Leighton Buzzard subcontractor's process flow. The first of the two latest acquisitions to join an existing Sunnen GV3 series vertical honing machine is a 2 m stroke HTB-2000S PLC horizontal tube honing machine initially supplied by Sunnen Products on a loan basis. "While waiting on delivery of a new custom-built hone, our plan was to avoid a potential bottleneck resulting from the significant increase in our deep hole boring capability," explains Andrea Rodney, Hone-All Precision co-director. "However, it proved to be a classic case of 'we liked the machine so much, we bought it'." Installed in June 2011, the second, larger, machine is a 3 m stroke HTC-3000W CNC horizontal tube hone. This has a touch-screen control, contributing to step-by-step set-up times of less than 2 mins. A major incentive for both investments is the growing demand for 28-employee Hone-All's close tolerance machining expertise from aerospace and energy sector customers. Using specialised drilling heads and indexable tooling to bore holes up to 200 mm diameter, Hone-All is able to achieve close tolerances, excellent accuracy and good surface finish – which is then further improved by honing to, typically, 0.05 micron. General machining capacity, which includes milling, turning, grinding, gundrilling and EDM drilling, extends to components up to 300 mm diameter by 3 m long. "Hone-All has all the skills needed to tackle some very challenging projects, added to which our relocation in 2008 to much larger premises has produced the quality controlled and efficient production environment essential to competing successfully in a technology-driven world," Colin Rodney, Hone-All Precision's managing director adds. "This latest investment highlights the changes we have made, and the improvements we are continuing to make, as part of a long-term commitment to our customers. We are totally focused on providing a competitive service in terms of the precision machining of high value-added components, especially where this involves difficult-to-machine materials that demand both specialist knowledge and the right equipment."