Cutting-edge investment

US-headquartered SGS Carbide Tool (01189 795200) officially opened its new UK manufacturing headquarters last month, with company president and son of the founder Tom Haag (pictured, left) there to officially mark the occasion, along with 1,000 mph land speed record seeker Sir Richard Noble (pictured, right), mainstay of the Bloodhound SSC project (www.bloodhoundssc.com) – SGS is a project sponsor. The new facility, located in Wokingham, Berkshire, is a 25,000 ft2 operation, boasting nine Walter tool grinding machines (01926 485047), with the latest three being automated Helitronic Power models. The company also has a DMG/Mori Seiki DMU 50 5-axis machining centre (0844 800 7650) to support development and demonstration work. There has been an investment to date of £6 million in the Wokingham development, but further tool grinding technology investments are planned, for which there is available space. The Wokingham facility is targeting sales of almost £7.5 million this year, reveals Tom Haag – it was £6 million last year. The new UK operation will focus on delivering a rapid response on specials and modifications, and includes an in-house coating facility – which will additionally offer its services independently of cutting tool manufacture. The US operation will concentrate on manufacturing stock products, of which there are some 8,000-10,000, with two to three new product families introduced annually. Most recently, its diamond-coated (Di-namite) routers, drills and end mills for the machining of composites have been presented, adding around another 80 tools to the company's product count. With its roots in 1951, as a burr regrinding shop for the mould and tool industry, located in Akron, USA, John Haag, having already worked at the company previously, bought into SGS (Seybold, Graves and Stahl) in 1961. In 1984, he bought all of the company and promptly started internationalising the business. The UK saw the company's first overseas operation set up, in Camberley, Surrey, the next year. Tom Haag became president in 2000 and today SGS Carbide Tool has sales of $120 million, is present in some 60 countries and boasts five manufacturing plants, including its abrasives and coating operation. In 2010, the entire company made some 7.1 million pieces of tooling, although in 2012 it divested itself of the burr division, selling this to ATA of Killygarry, Cavan, Co. Cavan, Ireland, so as to concentrate on end mills, drills and engineered products. Today, the company produces up to 3 million parts per year, offers Mr Haag, with production typically running at 8,500 to 9,000 end mills/day; 1,800 to 2,000 drills; and some 750 to 1,000 specials. Around the world, there are stocks to the value of about $9 million (about a third of that in the EU), with next-day delivery the rule. SGS Carbide Tool's focus is now on advanced performance products, which in 2012 represented just over 50% of its global sales, but which are targeted to be 70% in 2015. And in that area, SGS was the pioneer of variable geometry technology for end mills, with the company purchasing the patent for it from a Japanese company making the product for its own internal use in the aerospace business. Already a 10-year-old patent, this formed the basis of the company's Z-Carb technology." Once we launched that product, it kick-started a new evolution in performance," recalls Mr Haag, adding that a lot of tool grinding machinery wasn't able to support the manufacture of this new technology at the time. With the expiring of the original patent, the company developed a new patented design, which is sold under the Z-Carb AP tag. The company president emphasises that the company has a "unique engineering capability just about anywhere in the world...we do a lot of technical training in the US and UK to help our sales people prove value at the spindle". SGS Carbide Tool serves many sectors, but is particularly focused on aerospace and medical, Mr Haag offers, noting that there is a "high barrier to exit" in those two sectors, since customers prefer to not switch suppliers. But tool development is linked to material groups, such as composites and high temperature alloys, advances in which demand new geometries and coatings, he adds. Tool coatings have been a recent development area, and Mr Haag states that SGS Carbide Tool is able to "engineer coatings better than other small companies, as we have our own coating operation". UK managing director Alan Pearce underlines that geometry is also key, with even small changes of design having major effects, and that the company is "focused on patents development". The company has two patents that have expired, two that are current, while it licenses two others, one for coolant through-holes and another for CFRP cutter technology, the company president confirms. Echoing sentiments of others in the cutting tool business, he underlines that SGS Carbide Tool is not focused on the 3% of cost attributable to cutting tool themselves, but on the 97% of other costs that can be positively affected by its tooling developments. TECHNOLOGY IN PRACTICE And demonstrating the company's tooling prowess, DMG/Mori Seiki's Martin Adams detailed a 3-year project on aero engine fan disc machining for Rolls-Royce in which it and SGS had been working together. Fan discs have contoured slots milled around their periphery, in which are located fan blades via a matching root form. They also require turning across their surfaces. Covering eight variants of fan disc of between 700 and 1,000 mm, the aero engine maker set out stringent requirements for a better production solution, which was based on DMG/Mori Seiki's FD 125 mill-turn technology (1,250 by 1,200 by 1,100 mm in X, Y and Z) and SGS carbide end mills. (DMG/Mori Seiki claims more than 800 FD machines installed, 600 in the aerospace sector, incidentally.) The existing process took 47 hours to produce a completed part, and required four machines and 10 set-ups. The criteria set for the solution was a reduction of at least 20% in the 47-hour process. A green-button solution was requested, meaning that no human intervention was to be required once the cycle start button had been pushed, while, as for quality, right-first-time manufacturing was targeted, with a Cp/CpK figure of 1.33 a further demand. On the process side, the solution replaced both trepanning and drilling with solid carbide milling, together with a workholding concept that allowed good access. In-process monitoring and SPC oversee the automated process, feeding back information and supporting corrective action, as required. Regarding the replacement of trepanning and drilling, the trepanning operation saw a surface finish of Ra 0.3 achieved via milling, while the milling of 4 mm diameter 4xD holes to H7 was also achieved – a 60% reduction in cycle time and 100% conformity were achieved. In fact, using 42 customer-specific measurement and evaluation cycles, and measuring 1,082 characteristics, the process in total delivered a 99.6% right-first-time figure, with "no reds; just yellows". Elsewhere, the project delivered a 25% reduction in production time, with 100% process traceability. In addition, the solution cut the number of machine tools to two, with a commensurate floor space reduction. In total, there are eight such machines operating in the UK and the US. A final presentation on the day was from UK CADCAM company Delcam (0121 766 5544), with the spotlight on its Vortex constant-cutter-engagement-angle pocket milling strategy, as applied within its latest PowerMILL software. By adopting full depth cutting, and a controlled and constant cutter angle engagement, cycle times can be slashed, due to perfect conditions operating throughout the cycle. This sort of full depth cutting is the perfect application for SGS Carbide Tool end mill technology, in fact. First published in Machinery, February 2013