Viscometer manufacturer Hydramotion turned to DMG Mori when it needed
to invest in manufacturing equipment.
Its instruments are used in a wide range of industries, including oil and gas, food and beverage, paints and coatings and resins, measuring the viscosity of liquids to an extremely high precision. This demands that the components of the instruments have to conform to extremely tight tolerances in dimensions and very high-quality finishes.
Managing director John Gallagher said: “We wanted to develop our engineering and introduce a philosophy with an F1 sensibility. We already use computational fluid dynamics software in product development, CAD for design and CAM for CNC programme generation,” he said. “The next step was to enhance high-performance machining to speed up production, ensure our products are of the highest quality, future proof our manufacturing and enhance the confidence our customers have in our abilities.”
Hydramotion built an 8,000 square foot factory extension to house its new machine tools, with a plan to integrate design, development and manufacturing to speed up its processes. “Feeding back improvements in machining capabilities to the design phase will in turn lead to product enhancements,” Gallagher explained. The company chose two machines: an NLX 2000 | 500 and a CTX beta 800 and, the former because it is equipped with a second spindle, and the latter, because it has a programmable travelling steady rest.
Parts that required four machining operations can be done in two on the NLX machine because of its second spindle; while the CTX machine can turn parts as small as 8.7mm in diameter and 850mm long without flexing. Moreover, the high finish quality reduces the time needed to produce a mirror-finish article by half compared with the previous machines.
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