For over 40 years, family-owned Strutt Engineering — based in the heart of the Peak District — has carved out a niche for itself in the manufacture of hydraulic grabs (used in the scrap, quarrying, waste recycling and excavation
sectors).
These involved a mix of fabricated and machined parts, with machining usually undertaken in batches of 25-30 on a selection of manual machines (or sub-contracted out in some cases), until the arrival of the company’s first CNC machine — an SLX 425 ProTurn lathe from XYZ Machine Tools (
www.xyzmachinetools.com).
Managing director George Strutt said: “We are not in a position to machine for stock, so batch sizes are limited but repeat quite frequently).
The switch from manual machining to the ProtoTrak control has worked out perfectly, and the XYZ lathe proved to be a highly cost-effective machine for the type of jobs we do.”
As part of a plan to modernise and future-proof the business, Strutt next invested in an XYZ 1000 LR vertical machining centre, which is producing parts that were previously manufactured on a variety of machines, using numerous jigs and fixtures.
Now, once the first batch has been programmed, Strutt can produce part after part without any problems — and much more efficiently.
Mr Strutt concluded: “The combination of the two XYZ CNC machines has resulted in significant improvements in quality, and we have been able to bring much of our work back in-house, thereby eliminating issues with lead times and logistics.”