Back in 2001, Warrington-based Roant Precision Engineering (
www.roantprecision.co.uk) was a small start-up precision sub-contractor with just a few manual machine tools at its disposal.
Working out of little more than a garage and without the finances required to invest in CNC equipment, company owner Darren Chisnall put his skills to the test by entering XYZ Machine Tools’ Edge Challenge Mill Off competition in 2002. This required entrants to manually machine a set component to tight tolerances, using non-CNC equipment and
without any specialist fixturing.
Mr Chisnall’s time of 1hr 22min won the challenge and he opted to put the value of his prize against an XYZ SM3000 turret mill, which is still hard at work for him today. “Winning that Edge Challenge with XYZ was a significant turning point for me. As part of the competition XYZ demonstrated how the part could be produced using a ProtoTrak control — from drawing to finished part in just 22min.
"Up to that point, I had been struggling to be competitive by manually machining parts that should really have been made on a CNC machine. With the arrival of the XYZ SM3000, things became so much easier. Business improved, and that allowed me to make further investments in XYZ machines fitted with the ProtoTrak control.”
With his workload increasing, Mr Chisnall took on a former colleague to help him provide one-off and low-volume precision components to customers in the food processing, chemical, process plant, scientific instrument and analytical instrument sectors. “All of that sounds very grand, but basically we are a sub-contract precision engineering shop, and we will work for anybody.”
The efficiency of the ProtoTrak mills from Burlescombe-based XYZ Machine Tools (
www.xyzmachinetools.com) led to the replacement of Roant Precision’s manual turning capacity with XYZ ProTurn lathes. The first of these was an XYZ SLX555 with auto-indexing tool-post, 1.75m between centres and a swing of 560mm over the bed.
“We recognised the need for CNC turning, and to bring in another ProtoTrak-controlled machine made perfect sense. We quickly added to this with a smaller XYZ SLX355 that allowed us to be more efficient on smaller components.”
Hot on the heels of these two lathes came Roant Precision’s third ProTurn lathe, an XYZ SLX425 with 2m between centres. This provided the additional capacity that was needed as the business grew. It has proved to be extremely accurate for the low- and medium-volume between-centres and chucking work undertaken by the company.
“Thanks to winning that first SM3000 machine, we have been able to grow the business into what it is today; and having six machines with virtually the same control means that our operators can move from machine to machine with ease.
"Not only that, with ProtoTrak we can produce complex parts easily; it is quick to program and makes life easier — even with the high skill levels that we have here. It certainly gives us an edge when quoting for work.”
Roant Precision is now a leading provider of specialist one-off and low-volume milling, turning and grinding capacity in the north west of England.
The company’s original location in the ‘garage’, as Mr Chisnall describes it, was soon left behind when it relocated to a 2,000ft2 rented workshop. As business continued to grow, a second move saw Roant Precision buy its current 5,500ft2 premises.