Back in 1989 when Mark Hirst set up MH7 Engineering in Brighouse, West Yorkshire, with just a turret mill, a centre lathe and an old Ward 7 turret lathe, his ambition was simply to provide a niche service to local manufacturing companies that were getting rid of their own tool-rooms and maintenance facilities.
Now, 26 years later, while he still makes one-off parts for machine breakdowns and makes the occasional mould tool, his company has diversified into general sub-contracting and the manufacture of parts for anything from work-holding fixtures, through racing-car wheels to soap-extrusion systems.
Mr Hirst says: “Our core focus still remains the low-volume one-off end of the market, where we can use our tool-room skills to get our teeth into specific problems and challenges.
This has given us extensive experience of many different industries, and we have been able to transfer knowledge gained from one industry to another, providing solutions that others may not have come up with.”
In addition to tool-room work, MH7 also takes on precision sub-contract work and provides a design service, which has led to some intricate and unusual components being machined.
This diversification necessitated investment in
machine tools; and as well as gear-cutting and EDM equipment for specialist work, MH7 also bought a number of ‘conventional’ machines from Burlescombe-based XYZ Machine Tools (
www.xyzmachinetools.com) — two XYZ ProTurn lathes (one with a 3m bed length), an XYZ Mini Mill 560, an XYZ 1510 vertical machining centre with fourth-axis capability and, most recently, an XYZ 1020 vertical machining centre.
“We purchased our first ProTurn lathe before we had any CNC machines, and its ProtoTrak control was a good introduction to automated operation. Now that we have experience of the ProtoTrak control — and the Siemens CNC on
the XYZ machining centres — our next move will be to go full CNC with an XYZ lathe.”
A recent project to machine a burner exit adaptor in 316 stainless from a billet was completed
on the XYZ 1510 with the fourth axis with ease. Another customer required some complex milling to be completed on an outlet to be used for testing turbochargers.
Slightly less exotic — but forming a regular source of work for MH7 — is the work done for work-holding specialist John Walton. This includes making Rock Steady work steadies, many of which end up back with XYZ for use on its XL range of large-capacity lathes.
The XYZ machines have made the manufacture of all parts that much easier, due to their versatility and the ease of use of both the ProtoTrak control on the lathes and the Siemens 828D ShopMill Control on the vertical machining centres.
Indeed, Mr Hirst takes full advantage of the user-friendliness of the machines when making one-off components for his collection of motorcycles (this includes a Coventry Eagle Flying 8, which he rebuilt from a box of bits). That said, he still had to machine a variety of parts, including push rods, engine casings, spindles and gears.
The customer service provided by XYZ is just one of the reasons that Mr Hirst continues to buy machines from XYZ: “Given the nature of the work that we do, we are often under serious time constraints. It is reassuring that we can contact XYZ knowing that most issues — both programming- and machine-related — can be simply sorted over the phone.”