Some 40 years ago, Ron Styles and Graham Brown formed a company to supply the type of tools that they needed but could not readily find. Today, Axminster Tools & Machinery is a £34 million-turnover company that has been called by some the ‘John Lewis’ of tools.

The company remains firmly in the hands of the Styles family, with Ron’s sons Bernie and Ian at the helm — along with grandson Alan, grandaughter Hayley and daughter-in-law Katina. Furthermore, Axminster has six outlets totaling over 70,000ft2 of retail space; these are in Warrington, Nuneaton (the largest of the stores), High Wycombe, Basingstoke, Sittingbourne and Axminster — the store with the highest turnover and near the company’s headquarters (www.axminster.co.uk). Moreover, more stores are in the pipeline.

Axminster Tools & Machinery employs more than 250 people covering all aspects of the business, from customer service in the call centre, which takes some 2,500 orders per week, to 13 professionals in the Axminster Skill Centre. While the focus here has historically been on wood-working skills and associated equipment, Bob Rolph and Tom Galvin run a number of courses relating to metal cutting. These include: an introduction to the small lathe; an introduction to milling; machining small castings; and machining for restoration — a course that is specifically designed for the mechanic and the vintage engineering enthusiast.

Electronic activity

Axminster is certainly a busy company, with 10 March this year seeing a record 27,777 visits to its Web site (there were even 11,802 visits on Christmas Day); there is also an active e-mail club with some 194,000 members.The company printed 198,000 Axminster Tools & Machinery catalogues for distribution this year, along with promotional material for the likes of BriMarc Tools & Machinery (acquired by Axminster in 2007) and Proxxon, which offers a wide range of engineering equipment including bench-top lathes and micro-mills. In fact, Axminster has 436 suppliers in 19 countries, trades in nine different currencies, and has an average stock value of almost £8 million.

The 52 staff in the warehouse work their way around a labrynth of stacked shelves; and with the aid of fork-lift trucks and a semi-automated order-assembly line, it takes just 14 min for an order to be assembled, checked and packaged ready for shipping. Warehouse manager Phil Crabb says: “We deal with about 1,200 orders a day, so it is a bit like a mini Amazon warehouse. We have different people working in different pick zones; and by ensuring that no similar products are located close together, we minimise the chance of a wrong item being picked.”

With this volume of sales, the company can justify its own transport fleet. This comprises two 12-tonne lorries and a 44-tonne articulated lorry; on average, each vehicle travels some 1,100 miles a week, and together they make 2,700 deliveries a year.

Manufacturing facility

While Axminster obviously has a large number of suppliers, the company also has its own comprehensive manufacturing facility. The main products made are wood-turning chucks, wood-turning accessories, wood-working accessories and bandsaw blades.

Last year, some 83,000 parts with a value of about £1 million were produced in the workshop, which houses four Mazak turning centres, two Mazak vertical machining centres, a Jones and Shipman surface grinder, a Trumpf laser marker and a deburring system from PDJ Vibro.

With an increasing focus on metal-cutting machinery, Axminster exhibited at MACH 2014 with a significant degree of success. Its TB-16 bench drill press, SB-16 floor drill press, SB-25 floor drill press and RDP-20B 16mm-capacity radial drill press received an excellent response from visitors — as well as orders.

In its 628-page catalogue, Axminster has no fewer than 44 pages devoted to engineering tools and machinery, which include its Engineer Series of equipment. While some of these items — such as the new SX2 Mini Mill and XN2 Mill Drill — are targeted at the advanced hobbyist, larger machines in the range have been designed for use in small production workshops and engineering facilities.

For example, the Axminster Engineer Series X6323A turret mill has a 2.2kW ISO30 spindle with a top speed of 4,500rev/min, a swivelling headstock, hardened and ground slideways, three-axis digital read-out, X-axis power feed and a three-stage auto quill feed.

On the turning front, Axminster’s CQ6230A-2/910 lathe is a floor-standing unit that is capable of undertaking heavy-duty turning and is suitable for applications in education, general maintenance and small production facilities. It features a high-tensile precision-ground induction-hardened bed, a gear-driven spindle with taper-roller bearings, a 1.5kW single-phase drive and a digital read-out.

CNC Technology

Over recent years, Axminster has been developing its CNC Technology range in conjunction with manufacturing partner Sieg. Mark Vincent, who was part of the Axminster team tasked with developing the range, says he was pleasanatly surprised not only by the build quality of the machines, but also by their capabilities.

“When we first introduced the CNC Technology range, we were convinced that our main market would be the education sector; and while we have installed plenty of these machines in schools and colleges, we have also sold many to businesses ranging from electronics to the oil industry.

“All the milling machines come with Sieg’s own software, which is compatible with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Key features include a 3-D high-speed preview function, inputting for G-code and canned cycles, support for four-axis simultaneous movement, and a minimum resolution of 0.0001mm.

Meanwhile, the larger KX3S mill and KC6S lathe come complete with an integrated cabinet stand that houses the electronics. The smaller KX1S mill can either be mounted on a bench or on the optional stand.

"Moreover, the electronic hand-wheel is particularly useful when setting a machine, as it allows all axes — including the optional fourth axis on a mill — to be controlled manually. For 2015, we will be introducing two new multi-tool mills with ATCs — iKX3 and iKX1 — and two slant-bed lathes. These are the iKC4 and iKC6.”

Axminster and education

One person benefitting from machines supplied by Axminster is Kevin Smith, who works at the Engineering, Design and Manufacturing Centre at the University of Southampton. “We produce most of the machined components for student and research projects within the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment. I have also equipped two totally new workshops that give students access to a wide range of tools and equipment. These include several Axminster machines, which the students find ideal for manufacturing components for their project work.”

Axminster gets closely involved with education on a number of fronts. For example, earlier this year — with the support of the NEF (New Engineering Foundation) and The Innovation Institute — it hosted a one-day Innovative Skills Workshop Masterclass for college lecturers within engineering and technology disciplines.

The day focused on the use of CNC machines and how, in simple terms, these could aid the progress and development of engineering skills in an education environment.

Closely involved with the proceedings was Jake Knight, who joined Axminster as an apprentice in 2008 and took a Certificate in Engineering Technology at Exeter College; he has since taken various other courses (including the Advanced Apprenticeship in Engineering and CNC Engineering), won Exeter College’s Apprentice of the Year Award in 2011 and is now Axminster’s Innovation and Manufacturing Team Leader.

Mr Knight says: “We showed the delegates innovative equipment that will aid the teaching of workshop skills; they also noted the importance of gaining experience in ‘traditional’ machining to support CNC skills.”

In conclusion, Ian Styles says: “We make every effort to support the education and training sector as, like most people within industry, we are acutely aware of the severe shortage of trained engineers in this country. Earlier this year, the Royal Academy of Engineering said it estimated that around 820,000 science, engineering and technology professionals will be required by 2020, with about 80% of them needed in engineering.

"Furthermore, SEMTA estimates that 82,000 engineers and technicians will be required by 2016 — just to deal with retirements. Anything that encourages more people to study engineering and think about making it their career can only be beneficial to the industry — and the economy.”