Custom-tool manufacturing

Seco Tools (UK) (www.secotools.com) is well known for its comprehensive range of standard turning and milling tools and inserts. Perhaps less well known is that an in-house manufacturing operation located at its Alcester facility designs and makes custom tools that provide unique added-value benefits for its customers.

Over time — and with some modification — custom tools can sometimes become standard tool offerings; this was the case with Seco’s Jetstream Tooling, which involves strategically positioned coolant exit holes being machined into a patented swivelling top clamp (known as the inducer) on the insert holder. When coolant is pumped through these small-diameter apertures, a high-velocity ‘jet stream’ is created that penetrates the precise friction zone between the cutting edge and the workpiece; this provides superior lubrication, cooling capability and chip removal.

Seco is not unique in having a custom tool manufacturing capability — most large suppliers of cutting tools offer this service to some degree — but it has kept this capability in-house (with a dedicated team of 23 staff) at a time when most competitors have decided to sub-contract it out or centralise the service at locations in Europe — or even further afield.

Manufacturing manager Julia Robinson says: “Customers in the UK and Ireland can be confident that their custom-tooling requirements are being designed and manufactured on their doorstep by highly competent and dedicated Seco engineers.”