Harrison's USA distributor, REM Sales, has recently completed the sale of an Alpha Plus 330S manual/CNC lathe to the River Valley Technical Center, as part of as part of a $300,000 contract.
Harrison's USA distributor REM Sales Inc of East Granby, Connecticut, has recently completed the sale of an Alpha Plus 330S manual/CNC lathe to the River Valley Technical Center, Vermont, as part of a $300,000 contract for new machine tools. The facility, which forms part of the Howard Dean Educational Center, is using the Alpha in support of its comprehensive, two-year manufacturing program that aligns with the NIMS (National Institute of Metalworking Skills) accreditation and certification program. Graduates from the course go on to seek employment in regional firms that focus on small to moderate CNC machining runs or consolidate on their training by pursuing two-year technical degrees.

The contract to supply the lathe and the other machine tools was keenly contested, with River Valley's Manufacturing and Pre-engineering Instructor Chris Gray sourcing nine bids from similar equipment vendors.

The bids were then presented to an advisory committee of local and regional manufacturers and together they selected the best equipment for the future of the program.

Mr Gray comments: 'I participate in a summer internship at a local manufacturer, Lovejoy Tool, each year.

Lovejoy installed an Alpha Plus 400S in 2000 and I have run it and programmed it extensively over the past two summers.

I believe the Alpha was chosen over its competitors because of its 'three-tier' approach to CNC turning: manual with stops, threading and tapers, AlphaLink CAD/CAM system and GE Fanuc control capability.

The quality of the Harrison line was also a characteristic my Advisory Committee gravitated towards.

'To be honest I think that the Alpha is a great machine and my only regret is that as a teacher, I can't seem to find enough time in my day to 'play' with it like I want to.' To date, students have used the Alpha under 'manual' and 'stops' modes only.

However, the CNC curriculum has now commenced, and the course is currently working on aspects of RS232 'G' and 'M' code and manual programming.

The basics of programming are taught for about three weeks before progressing to CAD/CAM.

Students accrue up to 90 minutes experience per day on the Alpha and all have to manufacture 'competency parts' on the machines they are trained on.

The Alpha 'competency part' incorporates a taper, a minimum of three diameters to +/- 0.0005in, a knurl, a thread (Acme, ISO or standard) and at least three length-to-shoulder tolerances that have to be maintained.

The Howard Dean Education Center and River Valley Technical Center not only serve as a secondary technical school for students of high school age, but also house four different post-secondary institutions (University of Vermont, Community College of Vermont, Vermont Technical College and Johnson State Extension Service), who together, could provide an almost unlimited student base with access to the Manufacturing Lab and the Alpha Plus 330S.

The acquisition of sophisticated CNC machinery is a major step forward in machine tool training for the center and support from REM Sales has been 'nothing less than excellent' according to Mr Gray.

Bradley Morris (President - REM), (Barry Ertl - REM sales contact), and Kermit Wright (REM Product Manager), have all contributed to the success of the project.

The Alpha Plus S is an advanced, large capacity two-axis lathe designed for manual, sequential or full CNC operation for almost any batch size.

Control is from an easy-to-use Fanuc console with a twin keypad configuration, providing the operator with the choice of ISO CNC operation from the right-hand keypad and 'AlphaSystem' interactive operation from the left-hand keypad.

The right-hand, ISO keypad has full CNC facilities, utilising canned cycles G70 to G76, tool nose radius and wear offsets, tool path graphics, inch/metric conversion and background editing.

Programs can be entered and/or edited directly at the machine.

The left-hand 'AlphaSystem' keypad is simplicity itself, generating on-screen programmed sequential operations in simple question/answer page format for parallel turning, chamfer, radius, taper and multi-start threads.

The AlphaLink CAD/CAM system is capable of drawing the component and preparing the machining sequences 'off-line'.

Once the machining cycles have been prepared, the program can be saved in either Alpha format or ISO format, both of which can be downloaded to the machine through the RS232 port.

On the River Valley Technical Center project David Smith, Harrison Director/General Manager says: 'I am delighted that River Valley Technical Center has specified the Alpha Plus 330S to help train North America's engineers of the future.

The combined benefits of ease-of-use, advanced functionality, superb build quality and sheer value-for-money have made the Alpha Plus S - and the newly developed Alpha T and U - ideal platforms for teaching basic, advanced and CNC lathe turning skills.