One of the UK’s leading sub-contract manufacturing businesses, Unicut Precision has built its reputation on a rapid response and on-time delivery; the company also aims to drive costs down over the term of a contract.
To achieve this aim, it relies on suppliers to provide similar levels of service.
Unicut Precision has 27 multi-axis sliding-head and fixed-head CNC machines producing batch sizes of typically 300 and more. Customers come from a wide range of industry sectors — including pneumatics/hydraulic motion control, automotive, aerospace and electronics. Moreover, some 80% of its business comes from OEMs.
Managing director Jason Nicholson said: “Our philosophy is to work with our customers over the term of a contract to provide a value-added/value-engineering resource, using our engineering experience to provide cost-down benefits.
“One example of this was a contract worth £4.8 million over four years; we managed to take 8% out of the cost over this period, which explains why customers are prepared to commit to the longer term.”
Unicut typically invests £600,000 a year in new machine tools, and it was with this willingness to invest that saw the company “step out of its comfort zone” and purchase a Mazak i600 Variaxis five-axis machining centre (equipped with a pallet change system) to support a contract for a prestige automotive manufacturer.
While the components in this long-term contract are relatively small, the £500,000 machine was specified to give Unicut the ability to accommodate larger components in the future.
However, buying this larger-capacity machine highlighted the issue of tool reach on small components. In order to accommodate the use of short tool lengths, a series of riser blocks was required, and these had to have Zero Point locations to suit the WNT ZSG vices that Unicut was using.
After discussions with WNT’s technical sales engineer Duncan Slough (involving a few sketches and an outline of what Unicut wanted to achieve), WNT developed working drawings that were duly signed off by Unicut; the bespoke riser blocks were then machined at WNT’s Technical Centre in Sheffield (
www.wnt.com) by Tony Gale, one of the company’s project sales engineers.
Within three weeks, the riser blocks had been fitted to the machine’s pallets.
The WNT ZSG 4 centric vices and the riser plates have given Unicut additional versatility. These vices have jaws that are fully interchangeable and are designed to eliminate the need for the type of ‘crimping tool’ that is common with similar vice systems.
Moreover, the precision-matched slides ensure repeatable clamping of ±0.01mm, while the integration of zero-point location ensures that set-ups are quick — andrepeatable to the same level of accuracy.
Component security is also optimised, with a maximum gripping force of 35kN allowing components to be gripped on just 3mm of material, while up to 200mm of material projects from the vice.
Mr Nicholson says: “The solution presented by WNT ticked all the boxes for us. It not only solved our immediate work-holding problem with the part we were producing, but also gives us options with other parts that we want to put on that machine.
“Having the riser plates with a vice mounted on the top of a zero-point system allows us to lift the part away from the table and keep cutter lengths to a minimum on smaller components.
“We work in a fast-paced environment, and the demands and expectations of our customers are for us to deliver on time; and we can only do that with the support from our own supply chain.
“In this instance, the risers arrived when they were expected and went straight onto the machine. We now anticipate using the WNT zero-point work-holding system with other tombstone-type fixturing and other WNT vice systems.”