A GBP 250,000 contract for downhole tool components prompted a subcontractor to invest in a new oil country lathe which can operate in manual 'teach' mode and full CNC operation.
A GBP 250,000 contract for downhole tool components awarded at the end of last year (2001) by a US company to Wilkie Engineering, Newburgh, near Aberdeen, prompted the subcontractor to invest in a new oil country lathe from Geo Kingsbury Machine Tools. Built by Gurutzpe in Northern Spain, the 750mm swing by 3m centre distance, flat bed CNC turning machine is the first from this manufacturer to be installed in the UK. The background to the purchase is unusual in that managing partner, Dave Wilkie, went ahead without having seen this or indeed any other Gurutzpe lathe, such is his confidence in Geo Kingsbury built up over 25 years.

Most recent additional machine acquisitions from this supplier have been a Kondia bridge-type HM2010 vertical machining centre (also Spanish) in February 2001; and in April 2002 an MHP 80 CNC lathe manufactured by Geo Kingsbury.

Established in 1976, Wilkie Engineering has progressed from a small farm equipment repair shop to become one of the leading engineering and fabrication companies in the area, employing 25 staff.

It started servicing the offshore industry 15 years ago and now specialises in building one-off recovery and intervention tools as well as deployment and topside frames.

A feature of the Gurutzpe Auto-M320 CNC lathe is the ability to choose between manual 'teach' mode and full CNC operation, although the former is not used at the Newburgh factory as the machine is easy to program at the Fagor control system, according to General Manager, Ray Beattie.

The machine was bought primarily to cut the lead time for producing aluminium and stainless steel brushes used to clean oil pipelines.

The majority of the CNC program comprises OD turning along a length of typically 1000 / 1500mm and cycle times are between 15 and 20 minutes - three or four times faster than when using a similar capacity manual lathe on site.

There is a spiral milled stabiliser at each end of the brush and extensive pocketing is needed for subsequently locating these stabilisers on the shaft.

All this machining is completed on the Kondia HM2010, which has been fitted by Geo Kingsbury with a Kitagawa rotary axis to enable the spirals to be milled.

This fourth axis is used for 50 per cent of the jobs put up on the machine.

One of the features Dave Wilkie likes in particular about the Kondia is its 1000mm table width and cross travel (Y), larger than that offered by most machining centres that have a two metre travel in X.

The full table capacity has been used several times, for example when refurbishing oil rig tongs and for drilling and tapping components that have been profiled on a water jet cutting machine.

Another testing job was to turn by circular interpolation 20mm off the 900mm outside diameter of rubber rings that had been supplied oversize.

In his opinion the HM2010, with its 40 taper 17.5kW spindle, is both well built and competitively priced; and the operators are very impressed with its performance, not least the 24m/min rapid traverse rates which are fast for such a large machine.

It is the first machining centre on site to have through-tool coolant and this too has been a revelation to Wilkie Engineering, boosting productivity especially when pocket milling and drilling; so much so that it is doubtful that another machining centre will be installed without this facility.

Control system is the Heidenhain TNC 426 digital CNC with ballscrew drive to the axes via digital servo drives.

Feedback from all linear axes is by Heidenhain linear scales, allowing positioning accuracy of 0.01mm with 0.008mm repeatability and resolution of 0.001mm - well beyond the needs of Wilkie Engineering whose general tolerance is half a thou.

However, as Dave Wilkie points out, tighter tolerance work might come along at any time.