A specialist manufacturer of precision industrial blades and machine knives, Horsham-based Precision Edge (www.precisionedge.uk.com) has established an enviable reputation supplying some of the UK’s household names in the wrapping and packaging, newsprint, mail-room production, food processing and recycling sectors — many of which have been customers throughout the company’s 25-year history.

It has achieved its significant market share and customer loyalty by creating products that exceed the performance of its competitors through better design and material development — and providing a ‘right first time’ guarantee for some of the most demanding high-speed applications.

Precision Edge’s Ross Candfield says: “We are currently very busy and have been for the past two years. Moreover, this is a trend that we envisage will continue, in part due to our pro-active approach to developing products that generate significant productivity gains for our customers, and also the fact that the industries we support are also pro-active in developing new products, all of which need innovative and effective packaging solutions.”

The company’s product range includes circular knives and flat knives, as well as form blades; all these are used in a wide variety of applications, ranging from the manufacture of tea bags to the processing of newsprint. Precision Edge also makes flow wrapping knives and anvils; and some of the company’s blades and knives feature its PowerEdge HPS500 process, which enhances the edge-retaining qualities of the blade and extends tool life by up to 20 times.


The manufacture of the blades and knives takes place in Precision Edge’s 7,000sq ft facility, which is split between metal cutting and grinding. For metal cutting, the machines used are a combination of traditional manual machines
and a selection of mills and lathes from Burlescombe-based XYZ Machine Tools (www.xyzmachinetools.com); these are all equipped with the ProtoTrak control, and they have recently been supplemented by the addition of an XYZ 2-OP portable vertical machining centre.

Mr Candfield says: “We bought our first XYZ in 2003 and have added more over the years. The speed with which we can set up the machines and be in production, along with the ease and versatility of the ProtoTrak control for programming, makes the XYZ machines ideal for the small-batch and prototype work that we produce. However, as we got progressively busier, we recognised that the limitation of the bed mills was their lack of a tool changer; most jobs require multiple tools, and this was adding time to jobs. We initially looked at buying an XYZ LPM machine as this ‘ticked most of the boxes’, but we decided that a larger machine would suit our work better and bought another bed mill — an SMX 5000.”

About 18 months after buying the SMX 5000, the first information on the new 2-OP machine became available, and Mr Candfield knew immediately that this was exactly what he had been looking for — a compact machining centre with an eight-position tool changer and the same ProtoTrak control system that he and his colleagues were familiar with. Moreover, the inclusion of the Jurgens ball-lock system on the machine table also fitted perfectly with Precision Edge’s workload: small batch sizes and batches that repeat often, making short set-up times vital.


Mr Candfield says: “As soon as I saw the information on the 2-OP, I placed an order, sight unseen, because I knew it would be perfect for what we needed. We are using it not as intended as a portable machine, but as a compact stand-alone VMC, and we see no reason to move it. The machine is being used in the manufacture of 50-60% of the knives and blades that we produce, and it has not stopped since it was delivered. It has been a game-changer for us. We can transfer jobs from the mills to the 2-OP without any reprogramming; and for the table’s ball-lock system, we have developed a series of fixtures that maximise the machine’s capacity while ensuring that we achieve very high levels of accuracy. Furthermore, the flexibility that the 2-OP gives us, combined with the speed at which we can now machine components, has allowed us to develop a stocking system that delivers a just-in-time resource for many of our customers. Without the 2-OP, that wouldn’t have been possible.”

While initially developed to add portable cellular manufacturing capacity by taking over secondary operations or the prepping of parts for fixturing on machines that command high hourly rates, the 2-OP’s performance and specification are seeing many companies — like Precision Edge, — using it to add machining-centre capacity in a confined space. The 2-OP has a footprint of just 760 x 1,220mm, a machining envelope of 355 x 305 x 455mm, a BT30 3hp 50-6,000rev/ min spindle and 15m/min traverse speeds in all axes.

“Before we bought our first ProtoTrak machine, we were 100% manual in our machine shop. We had an ageing workforce at that time, and finding new skilled people locally was a problem, so the simplicity of programming the ProtoTrak made it the perfect progression from manual to CNC. Now 12 years on, we are much leaner and more productive than we could ever have been and we have honed our machining skills to produce more — and better — products.”