The overwhelming success of a Walter face-milling cutter at the Nottingham-based hydraulic-cylinder manufacturer AH Garner not only led to the wider application of the tool and its Tiger.tec Silver inserts, but also initiated investigations into other tools and inserts from Walter GB Ltd, Bromsgrove (www.walter-tools.com).

Under Garner’s on-going continual-improvement programme, managing director Marek Lewandowski asked production engineers Michael Dalton and Bijo Joseph to investigate whether the company’s machines and methods were making the most of modern tooling — and whether their tooling suppliers were providing adequate levels of back-up and support.

Mr Lewandowski said: “We needed to know whether we were pushing our tooling to the limit. Gaining improvements in cycle times — and therefore reduced production costs — is not solely about investing in the latest machine tools; very often, it pays handsome dividends to also investigate existing methods, looking closely at everything that is involved in manufacturing.

“This investigation resulted in us taking a closer look at our tooling, which mainly comes from two suppliers/distributors. These include Matrix Tooling, which provides our Walter tools; and while we were looking for improvements across our machining routines, the main focus was on drilling and milling.”

Garner makes a range of hydraulic cylinders (and attachments), with bores from 25 to 200mm in diameter and lengths up to 3m. The 33-employee company has customers in various industry sectors, including construction, agriculture, waste processing and powered access.

It has a number of CNC machines, including four vertical machining centres (the latest being a four-axis Dah Lih VMC), as well as welding and fabrication equipment — plus finishing processes that include skiving and roller burnishing. Assembly and pressure testing complement the manufacturing facilities.

Garner, which is accredited to ISO 9001:2008 and was established in 1860 as general engineers, began producing cylinders in the late 1970s. The company has spent the last 30 years totally focused on these, working closely with clients on new designs, as well as improving existing products. Batch sizes are typically 20- to 100-off.

Matrix initially invited Walter GB’s area sales engineer John Hejdner to undertake the test drilling of 4mm-diameter holes using a solid-carbide Alpha 4 XD16 (hole depths up to 16-times diameter) with through coolant.

These tests achieved good results. Mr Hejdner also trialled Walter’s MX 400 face-milling cutter with Tiger.tec Silver WKP 35S inserts. This was used to machine flats on both sides of an EN3B end-cap component.

Mr Dalton said: “The results were fantastic. In line with Mr Hejdner’s recommendation, we took depths of cut that were similar to our existing tooling but applied the Walter tool at a cutting speed of 1,314m/min compared to 602m/min, and at a feed rate of 4,335mm/min rather than 481mm/min.

The Walter tool slashed machining times by milling two sides of the block in just 18min, compared to the 75min required previously. The results would effectively reduce annual machining time on these parts from 7,689min to just 2,250min — freeing up 91hr a year of machining time while offering a 35% saving on insert costs.

As a result, we had no hesitation in applying the M400 with the Tiger.tec Silver inserts to a variety of other milling tasks. In the case of a small valve block, this tooling slashed machining times by 40%.”