Established in 1976 as a manufacturer of counterbore and countersink tooling, Robert Charles Cutting Tools of Southampton has updated its shopfloor equipment.

Established in 1976 as a manufacturer of counterbore and countersink tooling, Robert Charles cutting tools of Southampton has updated its shopfloor equipment. The updating of machine tools comes as part of the company's plans to meet the growing demands for specialist tooling in Europe and the growth potential of the US market. To help Robert Charles Cutting Tools with its global assault, the company has purchased Anca grinders and a Tornos Deco 26a sliding head turning centre.

Robert Charles cutting tool managing director, Robin Urry commented: 'Demand for our products was on the increase as was the variety of products and with aging machines we were finding it difficult to react to the needs of the market.

We knew it was time to invest in new technology and our production supervisor set about finding a suitable machine tool capable of producing parts in one-hit to reduce or eliminate second operations.' Production supervisor Mark Angel added: 'We did feasibility tests with all the leading sliding head manufacturers and Tornos came out top by a country mile.

We machine M35 high speed steel in average batch sizes of 500 to 1,000 and that requires a rigid machine with powerful driven tooling - the Tornos was the only machine that could meet our needs.' The company purchased the Tornos Deco 26a in 2003 and since its introduction the company hasn't looked back.

The Deco 26a increased productivity dramatically by turning parts on the main spindle, whilst simultaneously machining the back end of a part on the sub-spindle.

The previous turning centres produced blanks and then the company would conduct manual second operations such as milling and drilling before heat treatment and grinding.

The Deco has completely eradicated most manual milling and drilling operations with its power driven tooling.

The introduction of the Deco has enabled Robert Charles to increase its productivity and redeploy a number of employees from the turning section to alternative tasks.

This has reduced labour costs for turning considerably.

With regards to productivity, one product range has seen cycle time fall by 70 per cent.

The job previously took three minutes to produce, the Deco cut that time to 40 seconds.

'The next step is to introduce sensors to enable the company to run complete lights out operation.

With the current set-up, confidence in tooling not to fail and, thereby, produce scrap has been an issue and the addition of sensors will enable us to overcome the scrap problem and move on to a complete lights out operation,' continued Urry.

The Deco 26a has enabled the company to cope with the increasing global demands for its products.

One particular cutting tool that required three flats for a European customer was outside the company's production capabilities.

The ability of the Deco with its driven tooling has since enabled Robert Charles Engineering to meet the demands of what is now one of the company's largest customers.

Accuracy of components has also improved since the introduction of the Tornos Deco.

The machine has eliminated second operations on many parts and has improved repeatability, accuracy and reduced the potential for human error.

The parts are now produced so accurately that grinding operations have also been considerably reduced.

Urry said: 'I am delighted with the machine.

It has done everything we wanted and so much more.

We have improvements to productivity and capability, thus improving our position in our markets.

Tornos have provided us with an excellent product combined with great customer support and the combination has created an excellent working relationship between us.'