Improving output in the grinding department

Boneham and Turner is a leading manufacturer and supplier of tooling components and precision engineered components in the UK. The company had two aging grinding machines in their production unit which they were replacing as part of their ongoing improvement program in conjunction with their centenary year celebrations.

Peter Boneham, managing director of Boneham and Turner, explains: “We are celebrating our Centenary year in business and as part of our continuous improvement program we have identified a range of areas for improvement. The grinding department was high on our list and after reviewing the offerings on the market we decided to opt for a highly respected company, Master Abrasives in Daventry, UK agent for the Micromatic range of grinding machines.

“We chose the Micromatic ECO200U Cylindrical, Semi-Automatic Grinding machine to take over from our existing aging grinding machines and this proved to be a superb acquisition. The machine was supplied with additional features such as Digital Read Out and micro taper adjustment which helps the operator to achieve the necessary tolerance requirements.”

Paul Widdowson, senior grinding operator with more than 40 years’ experience, described the improvements that are being made in the grinding department with the new Micromatic machine. He says: “This new Micromatic machine was purchased to grind a full range of jig bushes, headed and plain liner drill bushes, locating and seating bushes in a range of tool steels and stainless steels for the manufacture and assembly of jigs and fixtures, press tooling and work holding devices.

“Since installation, this new Micromatic machine has produced a lot of close tolerance work very accurately and has proved to be very repeatable. As a result, we have recorded improvements in production output in the grinding department. The old machine had developed inconsistent sizing issues, a back log and high levels of arrears. The new Micromatic machine was up and running within a couple of days and Jake Golding, one of our skilled machinists, received machine functionality training at the time of installation, also provided by Master Abrasives technical support team. He was soon running the machine confidently.”

Ian Meredith, Master Abrasives' applications engineering manager, comments: “It’s been a pleasure working with this renowned company to make improvements to their grinding department after 100 years in business. Martin Stevens (applications engineer) and I had the privilege of joining their centenary celebratory event a few weeks ago and we’d happily help them out again with any future application requirements.”

Peter Boneham concludes: “From start to finish, the whole purchasing experience with Master Abrasives was very good – communication, deadlines and promised delivery date were successfully met, which significantly helped us with our production planning.”

Master Abrasives encourages manufacturers to visit its grinding and finishing showroom in Daventry, where application engineers can show Micromatic grinding machines’ capabilities in action, as well as superfinishing devices, metrology equipment and abrasives.