Leader feels positive wind of change

The rapidly developing wind power industry was recognised by Toshiba Machine of Japan several years ago and over the last 10 years the company has supplied a number of large machine tools to various European manufacturers of wind turbines. The increasing demand for renewable energy is seeing wind generators increase in size and the machine tools required to produce the frames, gearboxes, propellers, bearings and universal joints have to be as robust and reliable as the end product. Like the wind turbines, the machines have to be heavy duty, run unmanned in automatic mode for long periods, be easy to control and environmentally friendly – all properties delivered by the Toshiba Machine range, says Leader. Toshiba machines are already producing components for wind turbines in Europe with the BMC twin-pallet and multi-pallet machining centres, the TMD large vertical turn/mill centres, the BTF & BP heavy duty horizontal boring machines and the TSS range of moving table vertical lathes (pictured) demonstrating success in this sector, according to Leader. Leader CNC is currently installing another new Toshiba 1.5 m diameter table vertical borer at a UK manufacturing plant, the third at that site in the last two years with more installations planned for 2007. The company also has further orders for three more vertical boring machines at different sites in the UK. Capacity for large part machining in the UK is now increasingly hard to find and, as the low-cost high-volume components are often cheaper to source elsewhere, machining of harder metals and larger complex parts is often the only way forward, suggests the company