After moving into a new manufacturing facility in August last year, Exactaform Cutting Tools Ltd (
www.exactaform.com) now occupies one of the UK’s largest cutting-tool manufacturing facilities.
The 44,000ft
2 £5.8 million operation near Coventry is home to 12 Vollmer machines — six QWD750Hs, three QXD200s, a QXD250, a QWD760 and a latest-generation Vgrind 160.
In 2012, Exactaform reported annual growth of about 25%. as its then seven Vollmer machines were each running up to 158hr a week.
This level of growth has continued over the last five years, with staff levels rising from 13 to 63 and annual turnover almost quadrupling from £2 million to £7 million.
At the frontline of cutting-tool technology, Exactaform instantly recognised the benefits of the Vgrind 160, installing the first machine of this type in the UK.
Commenting upon the company’s growth and the reasoning behind the Vgrind purchase, Jamie White, grandson of Exactaform’s founder, said: “Exactaform was founded in 1979 by John Inglis with a £1,000 loan and a single machine in a garage.
"The company really evolved in the early 2000s, when it moved from flat insert tools to rotary PCD tooling, which allowed us to gain a lead in the composite-machining sector.
"We installed our first Vollmer machine in 2001, and we haven’t looked back since. We maintain the ethos of a family business, offering a fast, efficient and friendly approach. We also consider profit as a resource to be invested in the business.”
Historically, 95% of Exactaform’s tool orders came from the aerospace sector.
However, as the benefits of advanced materials such as CFRP have come to be used by an increasing number of manufacturing industries, the customer base has shifted.
The breakdown is now 60% aerospace tooling with the balance taken by the automotive and F1 industries.
Exactaform’s latest cutting-tool developments include the Aero-Carb range of diamond-coated two- and four-flute end mills for composite machining, and the Aero-Ti line of end mills for titanium and aerospace alloy machining.
Needing to ramp up production volumes, Exactaform installed the Vgrind 160 from Nottingham-based Vollmer UK Ltd (
www.vollmer-group.com).
Fast production
Mr White says: “We wanted the Vgrind for grinding pockets on small-diameter tools.
“The combination of the 16,000rev/min spindle and the ability to load small grinding wheels gave us the ability to pocket-grind tools in the 6mm-diameter range.
“This is not feasible with grinding wheels that are typically in the 70mm-diameter range and using slower spindle speeds.
“Our new capability meant we went from eroding tool pockets in 45min to grinding them in just 2min.”
One feature of the five-axis Vgrind 160 that appealed to Exactaform was the pallet-loading system. This enables the company to load tools with shank diameters from 6 to 16mm (20mm pallets available) in two pallets that each accommodate up to 56 tools.
This feature means that the operator can load a variety of tool diameters and geometry requirements and leave the Vgrind to process all the tools in a single set-up.
On machines without this pallet arrangement, operators would have to process batches of tools with the same shank diameter and change pallets for each tool diameter — a process taking about 15min.
“The machine features a two-spindle column, so we can flute and pocket our tools in a single set-up. On our other grinding centres, this would be two separate operations taking over 1hr — plus the additional change-over and set-up times.
“Now, we can complete a tool on the Vgrind 160 in just 18min with one set-up. This is a massive cycle-time saving, and it streamlines our work-flow.
“Furthermore, the grinding-wheel change-over is 5sec, compared with 30sec on our other machines; and depending on tool complexity, there can be anything from three to six grinding-wheel changes for each tool, so we are shaving minutes off our cycle times with wheel change alone.”
The Vgrind 160 also incorporates a high-pressure coolant system that delivers 20-bar coolant to the tool and grinding wheel. This high pressure helps to retain wheel sharpness for optimised productivity — and it extends wheel life by over 35%.
Mr White says: “The machine also has a Renishaw LP2 probing system, which measures the wheel and the loader to make sure there is no dimensional drift.
“This is done automatically in 20sec; previously, we had to physically remove wheels to measure them, which took 3-4min a couple of times a day.”