When Body Engineering (
www.bodyengineeringltd.co.uk) in County Durham needed a CNC turn-mill centre for the one-hit machining of components for an MoD contract, Sheffield-based Ward CNC (
www.wardcnc.com) reacted quickly.
It supplied from stock a Hyundai-Wia L230 LMSA CNC lathe equipped with a C axis, driven tools and a sub-spindle.
Richard Body, who founded Body Engineering with his brother David in 1989, says: “We’ve historically enjoyed a good order book for defence components, but this sector’s forward ordering of smaller turned/machined components has waned in recent times, so we moved into the production of larger components.
However, as the customer’s existing stocks became depleted, demand returned for the smaller-diameter turn-milled work — a mixture of components that we had previously machined plus some new parts, predominantly high-tensile steel — so we needed a suitable machine that was immediately available, “We looked at the market-place, and it
was clear that the Hyundai-Wia offered the best choice, especially in terms of machining flexibility, since we wanted to use the new machine in both bar-fed and chucking modes to suit varying batch demands.”
The selection of the L230 LMSA was also influenced by the performance of Body Engineering’s three existing Ward CNC-supplied machines.