Says company director Paul Cobb: “One particular customer, Dual Mist, requires component traceability to meet end customer expectations and industry safety standards. It requires part number, date and the location at which the part was manufactured. As we don’t know when we are making a batch of any particular design, we had to have a flexible solution.
“When we first started producing the parts, the volume was low enough to allow us to engrave the data on the circumference of the body. However, it added a minute to the machining cycle time of a lathe that cost £200,000. We are currently producing to order 2,000 parts per month, and that would be a lot of lost machining minutes.”
Technifor Laser 2000 system
After market research, HPC chose a Technifor with TD412 model laser. Cobb explains why: “First, as a bench-top machine it is very compact; while we are not restricted for room, we are keen not to waste floor space. Second, it is extremely well designed and built; when you have seen a few, you know a good one. The third reason is the intuitive ease of use of the software; it is so straightforward even I can use it.”
At HPC Services, the Technifor laser unit additionally drives a rotary axis to allow the cylindrical nozzles to be clearly marked around their circumference. By repurposing the plastic collet designed to be used by the installation engineers to screw the nozzle into the water feed pipework, HPC Services has created an effective method of holding the nozzle body without risk of damaging it.
“The Technifor system allows us to run the turning centres more efficiently and the mark generated on the component is of a much higher quality,” concludes the company director.
