The latest result of this strategy has seen the Tamworth-based company buy an HMT S-15 automated rod cutting machine from GSE Technology made by P&S Maschinenbau of Cham, Germany, at the MACH exhibition.
ITC production manager Kevin Ford says: “Whilst we buy a lot of our carbide rod already cut to length for standard product ranges, a lot of special and bespoke tools are required in non-standard lengths. Cutting each carbide blank takes anything up to 5-6 minutes and we presently have an operator continuously cutting carbide rod on our existing semi-automatic machine. The new GSE HMT S-15 will automate the process and free up time for our operator to take on new, less repetitive tasks.”
He continues: “Depending upon rod diameter, the new machine is capable of cutting anything from 3 to 40 mm diameter, 500 mm long rods completely unmanned. This will allow us to process special tool lengths in batches of UP to 1000+ tools lights-out. This can have a huge impact by reducing the time it takes the tools to get to the first production operation, and by eliminating a bottleneck, it enables us to manufacture special tools in an even quicker lead time than we do at present. In addition, the machine can be used in manual and automatic mode. This provides the facility to rapidly cut small tool quantities with no time consuming set-up processes.”
