Clive Fearnley borrowed £200 in 1967 from a family member to buy his first lathe and set up his company in a small room above a dairy; recently, CNF Precision spent over £1.5 million on equipment, including high-end machine tools such as a 15-pallet Matsuura Hplus300 HMC, a two-pallet Doosan HP5100 and a Nakamura Super NTJ twin-spindle turning centre with B axis.

Neil Fearnley, managing director and son of the founder, says: “When I started here 25 years ago, we made our first foray into CNC with a basic Bridgeport featuring a retrofit control. Now, we have some of the most productive and efficient machine tools available and are machining extremely complex parts for the aerospace, medical, scientific and motor-sport sectors in materials ranging from aluminium, steel and brass through to more exotic materials such as Inconel and tungsten.”

Producing a vast array of parts — including cabin interiors and tooling fixtures for aerospace OEMs, as well as anaesthetic and life support systems for the medical industry — the sub-contractor machines everything from prototypes through to large production runs. Pride of place on the shopfloor is given to the Matsuura Hplus300, which runs unmanned for 16hr a day on aluminium parts only.

However, to maintain this up-time, the 120 tool pockets have to be stocked with similarly productive and reliable tooling solutions — hence CNF’s association with Tamworth-based Industrial Tooling Corporation (ITC ) (www.itc-ltd.co.uk).

Mr Fearnley added: “ITC was recommended to us back in 1997 and we’ve been using its tools ever since. The 120-tool Matsuura is equipped with solid-carbide drills and end mills from ITC. It is run over 120hr a week, handling up to six different jobs at any one time. Moreover, the same ITC finishing tool has been running on all these jobs for almost 12 months without being changed.”

CNF says that a 10mm-diameter ITC 3041-series three-flute solid-carbide roughing tool being used on an MoD aluminium panel case has reduced cycle times by 50% and more than trebled tool life. This was achieved while running on the company’s Doosan HP5100 HMC at speeds of 14,000rev/min and feeds of 6m/min with a 5mm depth of cut. Moreover, the same cutter is still running five months later — despite the Doosan running 20hr a day.