Specialist machining subcontractor's sliding head turning centre is used for making critical parts used medical gas, anaesthesia and optical equipment to tolerances under 0.005mm.

When family run Advanced Coil Slitters (ACSL), a specialist contract manufacturing supplier to the medical, aerospace, hydraulics and instrumentation industries needed a functional and productive turning centre - it turned to Tornos Technologies. ISO: 9001/2000 registered ACSL provides a rapid response 'emergency service' to customers needs. To fulfil this demand, Stevenage based ACSL operates a high specification production facility on a 24h basis with 30 employees covering a three shift pattern.

An integral part of the high specification CNC equipment at ACSL is a Tornos Deco 26a sliding head turning centre.

Used for the manufacture of critical parts incorporated into medical gas, anaesthesia and optical equipment with tolerances less than 0.005mm, the 32mm diameter capacity Deco 26a has been a valuable asset to the company.

ACSL production director Steve Ward said: 'In the time we have had the Deco 26a; it has been an excellent machine.

It runs 24/7 on a diverse range of materials from Hastelloy, stainless steel, brass, aluminium and plastics.

The 12-axis machine is capable of very complex work and this capability has reduced some jobs from five operations to one.

One component, an oxygen regulator underwent drilling, milling and turning with five set-ups - when moved to the Tornos the 12 minute production time was reduced to 3 minutes with only one set-up.

There are many more examples similar to this.' Ward said the average cycle time has been cut by 40-50% since the introduction of the Deco 26a and believes that the high number of machine axis has increased the company's flexibility.

'Whilst 12 axes may seem a daunting prospect, the machine is very flexible, highly productive and extremely easy to set-up.

We can now do jobs that were previously outside our scope.

It has changed the way we quote jobs and it has increased our capabilities and confidence to go after more complex work.

Some of the jobs that come off the Deco 26a are so complex you would not believe they came off a lathe,' commented Ward.

Discussing the simplistic set-up of the Deco 26a, Ward said the Tornos control system, the TB-Deco may be different to all other control systems but once understood is very simple to understand.

'The TB Deco enables us to run simulations before starting machining cycles; this has given us a high level of confidence and guarantees we avoid tool collisions.

Tornos regularly provides us with TB Deco updates and enhancements; this improves productivity and makes life easier when programming the machine.

We run some extraordinary program variations and the Deco 26a does some amazing things using the combination of axis,' continued Ward.

When choosing a turning centre, ACSL needed a flexible machine that was easy to set-up, productive and had an easily accessible work envelope.

When the company chose the Deco 26a, it found a solution capable of producing batch runs of anything up to 10,000 on an extremely diverse range of products.

Commenting on this, Ward said: 'There are a lot of product variations going through the machine and during changeovers the spacious work envelope provides plenty of room to change tools.

'It rarely runs for less than 24h and often runs for up to four days with just reloading of the barfeeder.

Once the tooling and program combination has been established the machine proves extremely productive and cost effective.

It has seen us change the way we operate and gets us thinking with a different mindset.

The Deco 26a has reduced our costs, improved productivity and capability and has enabled us to relocate staff to alternate tasks and machines.' Ward concluded: 'Tornos provide us with good service and are a very approachable company.

This was epitomised by the well run training course that saw our operators learn their way around the machine very quickly.'