The relentless march of technological progress means that manufacturers are faced with major challenges on an almost daily basis. For those companies that are willing — and able — to take up the gauntlet the rewards can be great, but it is rare for a new start-up to make it into the top flight of engineering sub-contractors at the first attempt.

However, that is exactly what Steve Coates, managing director of Colne-based Optimill Ltd, has achieved over the last 18 months — including becoming one of only 300 companies in Europe to hold TUV Nord Aerospace EN/AS-9100 certification.

That said, it helped that he had half a lifetime of engineering and commercial experience that included establishing a highly successful sub-contract business.

The sale of that business funded an attempt at early retirement; but when boredom set in, the cure was the founding of Optimill Ltd in January 2013, partnered by his wife (Kath Coates) and James Bolland.

Mr Coates says: “There’s a shortage of really good engineering companies in the UK; from the off, our ambition has been to be numbered among them. We’ve installed high-quality machines with ample capability, and we now have two CNC lathes — one with mill-turn dual-spindle facilities — and a vertical machining centre.

“A second — and larger — VMC is on order. We’ve also had the benefit of my long-term experience with Horn Cutting Tools Ltd. In many cases, we’ve found that only Horn offered a tooling solution that enabled us to do a particular job.”

Rapid growth

On Day One, Optimill had no customer base, but the company’s rapid growth has been supported by a willingness both to innovate and to draw upon advice and support from key suppliers such as Ringwood-based Horn UK (www.phorn.co.uk).

A recent job entailed the internal and external machining of a nickel chrome alloy bush. Its internal changes of section, material hardness of 60HRC and 0.0005in-diameter tolerance presented a series of challenges, including an intolerably short tool life — just two or three components per tip.

Mr Coates said: “The solution was provided by a Horn Mini internal groove/boring tool; this allows a full monthly batch of 70 components to be machined to tolerance without changing the insert. It’s commonly the case that the apparently high price of Horn tooling translates into a solution that saves overall cost.”

Another example involved the dry machining of a cast-iron component that suffered from retained sand; this resulted in excessive tap wear and difficulties in maintaining the thread profile because of ‘push-off’.

“Optimill was able to overcome the problem by using Horn’s ‘single-thread profile-threading system’, which generates repeatably accurate thread profiles and completes a batch using one tool, with no time penalty compared with tapping.

Cost-effective

“Optimill has also used Horn’s thread-milling system to provide the reach and mechanical rigidity needed to access and machine a plain bore using circular interpolation. “Cost-effective manufacturing solutions are good for us and for our customers,” says Mr Coates.

“We always look for a way to get the job done quicker and better — though with some of the materials we process, simply finishing the job to specification is quite an achievement.”

Another project saw Optimill develop a ‘machine from solid’ process path using Horn DAH high-feed milling to replace a manufacturing route based on the use of forgings. The new process has removed a major stage from the original manufacturing cycle — and enhanced ‘as machined’ consistency.