A new CNC gantry mill is achieving high accuracy and already fast turnaround times have been improved further on large machined items up to 5m in length, says a West Midlands subcontractor.
Despite the generally slow industrial economic climate, Machined Fabrications based in the West Midlands are thriving thanks to the purchase of a new Zayer KP 5000 gantry milling machine from Viking Machine Tools. Their increased capability in providing specialist subcontract manufacturing for one-off and short run large parts such as machine tool bases has justified the investment. High accuracy results are now achieved more easily and improvements have been made to already fast turnaround times on large machined items up to 5m in length.

MD of Machined Fabrications, Matthew Wild commented, 'we needed to replace an old travelling column bed type milling machine and we believe the Zayer machine is one of the best quality gantry mills on the market.

Having previously had a good experience when buying machines from Viking, we were pleased that they were the UK agent for Zayer.

Their mechanical and electronic service support is excellent and the response time is very short.

This is particularly important to us as we operate 24 hours a day.' The Zayer machine is fundamentally more accurate than a moving column design because the milling head remains fixed to a gantry, which is a far more rigid structure than a column arrangement where the machining head extends on a ram.

The gantry mill bed moves longitudinally on precision ground guides and so tolerances are maintained over long machining distances.

This feature is crucial according to Ian Hinton, Machined Fabrications Machine Shop Manager, 'the finishing tolerances required by our customers for machine tool parts are often within a few microns over very large surface areas, up to 5m2 for example.

To achieve this accuracy in terms of 'flatness' it helps to have a milling head that remains rigidly fixed during the machining operation'.

Ian adds, 'the Zayer machine has a number of other features that have enabled us to increase production performance; we specified our KP 5000 machine with interchangeable straight and right-angle machining heads, allowing us to machine five surfaces on a work-piece without moving it from its initial workholding position on the bed.

This has saved a huge amount of set-up time and completely removed the issue of compound machining errors that can be caused by having to move the piece for each machining operation and re-orientate the milling head each time.

The milling heads also have through-spindle cooling, allowing us to perform high speed drilling operations and also helping the milling head to maintain optimum cutting speeds for extended periods.' 'Having invested in this machine, the overall benefit for us is in being able to achieve consistent, accurate results more quickly and more efficiently.

The new machine has also increased our overall production capacity.

Machined Fabrications operates on very short lead times, as we take a design from our customer and deliver a finished item including the purchase of materials, welding, shot blasting, machining and painting.

Most of our machines work on a 24hr basis and so faster production improves our service to our customers and enables us to take on more work.' William Savin, Joint MD of Viking Machine Tools isolates other reasons for the success of the Zayer gantry milling machines, 'These are premium quality machines, available in many different sizes with bed lengths from 3-36 meters, each one is built around a solid cast base, providing maximum rigidity for the whole structure.

The machine controller specified on this example is an industry leading Heidenhein unit and the whole package allows the machining of single pieces up to 10tonnes.

As a package, this machine offers improved quality and can reduce overall cycle times by up to 50%.' Viking Machine Tools provides a complete service for metalworking machine tools from basic turret mills to large scale turning and milling machines.

This includes expert advice on machine choice and specification, to commissioning and highly responsive same-day technical support, both electrical and mechanical support services are available on-site and in-house at Viking.