PAB Coventry, which produces sheet metal components, pressings and fabrications in quantities from prototypes
up to 10,000 per year, has invested £1.5 million in new machine tools since early 2016.
These include a Hurco vertical machining centre from High Wycombe-based Hurco Europe Ltd (
www.hurco.co.uk) and another hydraulic press — plus a 4kW flat-bed fibre laser cutting machine, a 4kW five-axis laser cutting machine and a 2m press brake (all from Prima Power).
The company also bought another two industrial units in Falkland Close, Canley, increasing its floor area by two thirds. Underpinning this expansion is strong growth in sales to the automotive sector, which accounts for 90% of the company’s turnover.
TS16949-accredited PAB specialises in fabricating sub-frame pressings, bracketry and grilles, as well as assemblies such as windscreen surrounds for the likes of Aston Martin, Lotus and other top-end car manufacturers.
The company also supplies Triumph Motorcycles. PAB, which operates 24/7 and has almost 100 employees, is also “moving strongly into the rail industry” and has recently used its AS9100 quality accreditation (gained through earlier military work) to win contracts in the aerospace sector.
Overall, turnover has doubled in the last three years, partly as a result of an association with Imperial College London spin-off firm Impression Technologies; PAB was the first company licensed to use the patented HFQ (heat treatment forming and in-die quenching) technology.
It is a method for deep-drawing thinner (and hence lighter weight) aluminium components for the automotive industry. Aston Martin is supporting the project by designing components (particularly A-pillars) for manufacture using the process.
Press tools
In 2015 alone, PAB spent over £1 million buying in press tools to produce its vast range of components from aluminium, mild steel and stainless steel, mainly up to 3mm thick. Around 700 ‘line items’ are handled per month in typical batch sizes of 300-350.
The expenditure on tooling was becoming so high that Mark Brazier, second-generation director at the family-owned pressings sub-contractor, decided to bring some of the manufacture in-house.
He said: “We already had a smaller Hurco machining centre and one of the company’s CNC lathes, which we bought about six years ago to help fulfil a contract that involved making blast-proof seats for military vehicles.
These have proved reliable over the years, so we had no hesitation in returning to the same supplier for a bigger machining centre to address our tool-making needs.”
The three-axis Hurco VMX60Ti, with its 40-taper 10,000rev/min spindle and 1,524 x 660 x 610mm work envelope, weighs nearly nine tonnes.
It machines PAB’s press tools comfortably to accuracies within ±0.015mm. In 2016, it produced 20% of the company’s tools, helping to manufacture the more than 1 million components shipped that year.
In the first half of 2017, the proportion of tools made in the Coventry facility rose to around 35%, and Mr Brazier predicts that it will eventually increase to more than 50%.
This latest Hurco machine is also used to manufacture inspection fixtures and composite try-out tools, and to undertake the milling and drilling of large parts such as door sills, plus the production of smaller components such as bosses and machine pins, if the other machining centre is occupied.
As far as programming is concerned, the complex surface profiles of most press tools require off-line preparation and downloading of machining cycles; PAB is using OneCNC CAM software.
However, for simple jobs like the milling of inspection fixtures and tooling plates, maximum advantage is taken of Hurco’s WinMax conversational programming software, which is included in the proprietary twin-screen control (the second screen allows a graphic of the component to be viewed and checked as it is programmed on the shopfloor).
The latest project — PHFHE (polymer micro-hollow fibre heat exchangers) — will for the first time involve the company in plastic-component manufacture.
In association with the University of Nottingham, it is helping to develop, optimise and manufacture lightweight polymer heat exchangers that are half the weight of traditional metal heat exchangers — and 50% less costly. PAB will also develop this type of heat exchanger for electric vehicles.