Tallot turns on technology for subcontract success

Citation

(2005), "Tallot turns on technology for subcontract success", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 77 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2005.12777bab.001

Tallot turns on technology for subcontract success

Tallot turns on technology for subcontract success

Keywords: Machining centres, Production processes

Nestled in a picturesque valley in Mid- Wales, surrounded by hills and fields is a fast-growing, high investment led machine shop with eight of the latest Citizen CMC sliding head automatic lathes installed by NC Engineering of Watford. The machines work through most nights and at weekends when the factory doors are locked with no one around and their only connection to the outside world is via a mobile phone that is always at the side of Tallot Engineering's director Terry Frost.

When Terry Frost, with managing director father Andrew (also permanently on call as the local fire fighter in the village of Llanfyllin) set up the CMC machining operation some five years ago, location in such a non- industrial area did not seem a problem.

Indeed, with a steadily rising order book from high precision fastener and connector type parts from aerospace, defence, navigation control and electronics sectors, customers from as far afield as Southern England and even France have proven that it is service and not distance that is important. Here, Terry Frost maintains: “Price, quality and delivery are key and through investment we can meet all these targets”.

A recent 10,000 part order from France is a prime example. The father and son partnership were able to devise a way of combining competitors' methods requiring three operations into a single cycle on one of its Citizen lathes and they stole the job from right under a French subcontract company's nose. “And we will deliver”, maintains Terry Frost, “because of our round the clock production capability”. In the last six months Tallot has invested another £500,000 in Citizen machines to give an installation base that now spans six L20s, one larger capacity L32 and one B12 machine. Looking to maximising the utilisation and return on investment, the company became the first in the UK to take on NC Engineering's NC Alarm Alert system which enables users of Citizen machines with Windowse based control software to remotely monitor what is happening while the machines toil through their designated tasks with no one in attendance.

Terry Frost recounts that he can get up to two or three calls a week from the machines notifying something has gone awry. It might be minor such as lube oil or coolant is low or the workpiece counter has reached its batch limit. However, it can be more serious such as a bar jam or a tool has failed.

“I can at least make a decision, acknowledge any machine call by dialling 5 on my mobile phone keypad and allow the machine to continue in production. I can also disable the monitoring system by dialling O and go into work to sort out the problem. There would be nothing more disheartening than closing the factory door in the evening to return in the morning and find a machine had a problem and shut-down and we had lost eight or more hours production. Worse still if we had a bucket full of scrap or reworks.”

The company machines a wide range of materials including plastics, copper, brass, invar and S130 stainless steel which he particularly points out as being a real confidence booster where Alarm Alert has proven its worth. Three- quarters of parts are under 20 mm diameter but he demonstrates the capability of the machines by showing batches of parts only 0.2 mm in diameter.

And he describes what looks like a simple stainless steel washer with offset milling in the centre. This is produced in a single hit, turned, drilled and milled and picked up by the sub-spindle and machined to an overall thickness of 0.17 mm! Tolerances of six µm are regarded as normal as are constant demands for grinding type totally burr- free finishes direct from the machines.

Batches are typically 100,000 but vary between 50 and half-a-million. While two machines are normally kept for fast turnaround, such has become the reputation of Tallot, with certain customers, that Terry Frost is charged with driving to London to maintain “to-line” stock management where he checks inventory and produces parts against pre-set maximum/minimum schedules. This method of working, although trust-based, gives Tallot the ability to plan ahead and group components together for higher machine utilisation and to even hold certain parts in a bonded store area at Llanfyllin which reduces set up times.

The most recent Citizen L20 was specified with a parts conveyor to keep the high precision aerospace parts separated. A GSX unit was added to the specification to triple the driven tool capacity and provide more flexibility as milling capacity on the machines is very much in demand for the type of parts now being produced. In the finished parts area awaiting despatch, dozens of labelled bags tell the story with machined hexagons, flats, cross-holes, knurls and very complicated grooves and profiles, many requiring a magnifying glass to see the features.

While the labour pool is very small in such a community Terry Frost is very complementary to his setting staff. They will come in and check the machines occasionally and it is not unusual for them to turn up and do a reset during the weekend then go back home. Normally each machine will be reset twice a day. Small batches of 500 or so will be put up in the morning and by mid-afternoon the machine changed over for the evening unmanned run. Larger jobs can be set on Friday and carry on through the weekend until the bar runs out or the quota finished. The L32 has been running continuously on a four month contract, and it is described as “purring away day and night”.

He maintains by staying with the mid-range L-series of Citizen he has total familiarity for setting and maximum flexibility to move work around between machines. “It saves a lot of grief,” he maintains.

To the future. An adjacent workshop double the size of the existing area is about to be totally refurbished and the production plant moved in. The extra floorspace gives an area to add value to customers' work by performing sub assembly tasks utilising the parts machined on the Citizens.

Details available from: NC Engineering Limited. Tel: +44 (0)1923 691500; E-mail: sales@ncengineering.co.uk; web site: www.ncenaineering.co.uk