A Soraluce CNC milling machine installed by Ward CNC of Sheffield at JCB Heavy Products has reduced cycle times by at least 15 per cent on a key machining operation.
A Soraluce CNC milling machine installed by Ward CNC of Sheffield at JCB Heavy Products has reduced cycle times by at least 15 per cent on a key machining operation for this world-leading manufacturer of excavators. Such is the success of the single-spindle Soraluce SP-5000 travelling column-fixed bed machine over existing twin-spindle machining centres, that the Soraluce is now being used to rough and finish machine all the fabricated arms manufactured at the company's Uttoxeter site. Producing a mixture of tracked and wheeled vehicles rated at 7 to 46 tonnes, JCB Heavy Products' level of design and manufacturing expertise can be gauged by its continually expanding order book and the recent accolade of a Queen's Award for Enterprise in the International Trade section.

JCB - Europe's largest manufacturer of construction equipment - sells its products in 140 countries.

'The business has grown rapidly over the past four years,' says Director and General Manager Mark Turner, 'and rather than simply absorb that capacity by 'doubling up' on existing machines, we began looking at our machining centre throughput in a completely different way.

'We'd been studying attachment machining for some time, and we knew that we had achieved optimum cycle times with twin-spindle machines.

But we wanted to improve machining times.' He continues: 'We targeted cycle time savings of 15 per cent to maintain competitiveness but without jeopardising product quality.' Says Mark Turner: 'Key to JCB's success is its philosophy of looking at business with a long-term view, and on that basis the selection of the machine and its supplier was very much based on our requirements for service and support in the future.' Powered by a 28 kW spindle, the Soraluce FP-6000 travelling column floor-type machine has X, Y and Z axes traverses of 6,000 mm by 2,000 mm by 1,200 mm.

Component fixtures are mounted on a separate tee-slotted floor plate in front of the machine.

It was subjected to a very tight specification in terms of cycle times and tolerances - 'which it achieved with no trouble', adds Mark Turner.

In addition to switching from twin-spindle operation to single-spindle machining in a different plane, Ward CNC worked closely with tooling suppliers and JCB to introduce dry machining and various helical boring routines, for example.