Earlier this year, leading foundation tools specialist Pro-Dig Ltd (Europe) bought four new CNC machine tools for its manufacturing facility in St Neots, Cambridgeshire.

These machines are being used to produce a range of male and female hollow-stem couplings for continuous-flight augers (CFAs) ranging in diameter from 200 to 1,500mm.

These couplings, which are made from high-tensile-strength EN 24, EN24T and EN 24A steel, are machined from solid billet.

Cycle times are often long, with most of the machining time spent on high-stock-removal roughing operations.
The couplings allow CFA sections to be joined together to reach the required bore depth.

The machines — supplied by Leamington Spa-based Mills CNC Ltd (www.millscnc.co.uk) — were two large-capacity Doosan Puma 400LB (long-bed) lathes plus two heavy-duty box-guideway Doosan Mynx 5400 (BT40) vertical machining centres.

Nic Brooker, Pro-Dig’s managing director, said: “Some time ago, we used to sub-contract our machining requirements, but this changed because we needed to have better control over quality, lead times and costs.

"We made our first investment in Doosan lathes and machining centres some years ago; since then, we have continued to upgrade our machining capabilities by investing in Doosan technology.

“When we purchased our first Doosan machines, Mills CNC was not the manufacturer’s UK distributor, so when we decided to upgrade our turning and milling capacity and capabilities in 2015, we were dealing with Mills for the first time — despite being a Doosan customer for some 16 years.

"Straight away, we liked Mills’ approach. They took the time to understand our business, then recommended a machine tool package — and they had the right size and type of machines in stock.”

Steven Hayes, Pro-Dig’s factory manager, said: “We operate in a competitive environment and work the machines hard — 10hr a day, six days a week. Our customers work to stringent deadlines, which means that our manufacturing processes — including our machining operations — have to be up to the job; we simply cannot afford machine down-time.”