Half a year after the Lotus F1 Team installed six Mikron HPM 450U milling centres from GF Machining Solutions (www.gfms.com) at its headquarters in Oxfordshire, chief operating officer Thomas Mayer is thoroughly satisfied.

“We made the strategic decision to extend our milling capacities to five-axis work, and we chose a system that allows us to machine workpieces in a single set-up. This decision has enabled us to increase our productivity considerably, improve the utilisation of our machine tools, achieve higher precision and reduce unit costs. As we wanted to standardise production with new five-axis machines, they all had to be identical.

"We wanted maximum flexibility and 100% compatibility, so that if one of the machines broke down, we could switch to another quickly and seamlessly.”

Once Lotus had made the decision to replace its three-axis milling machines with five-axis models, it made a list of the most important requirements. These included size, capacity, performance features, availability and costs, as well as the amount of servicing required. Last but not least, the quality and speed of the GF Machining Solutions customer services department in England was a key factor.

“The HPM 450U machines fulfilled our high expectations right from the start. As a result, by machining workpieces with just one set-up process, we have increased our productivity and quality considerably.”