Keith Donnellan and Chris Murphy — directors and joint partners of Riteway Engineering in Galway, western Ireland — have enjoyed considerable success since starting their company in 2006 with a handful of manually operated machines
and a single customer.
By 2011, they had eight staff and were operating a range of CNC machine tools, including three machining centres and a lathe from Hurco. Business has mushroomed since then.
At the end of 2015, the company had twice as many employees, five-times the factory space (15,000sq ft) and six-times the turnover. It also added six more Hurco machining centres — supplied by Hurco Europe Ltd’s (
www.hurco.co.uk) local representative in Ireland, Michael Gannon — and a move to double shifts for six days a week, with a third shift added when needed.
Mr Donnellan said that all of this growth, which continued throughout the last recession, has been organic and has come mainly from referrals from satisfied customers; and rather than just working for firms in the Galway area, Riteway now supplies companies throughout the whole of Ireland — and the UK.
Contracts from the medical industry have held up well and account for about half of the company’s business, especially the design and manufacture of prototype and pre-production surgical and pharmaceutical products.
Additionally, the manufacture of assembly aids for the automotive industry, along with telecommunications work, has seen these sectors each comprise 25% of turnover.
Mr Donnellan says that such rapid business development needs careful management: “Doubling our personnel in four years meant introducing a lot of new employees to the way we operate. It was a real bonus that all of our shopfloor recruits knew how to program and operate Hurco machines, as there are so many of them in use in the west of Ireland — and throughout the whole of the country.
“We do not have any other make of machining centre here, so every new machine operator was up to speed quickly, making the transition with each intake of people seamless.”
Shopfloor programming
Most programs at the Galway factory are prepared conversationally at the Hurco machine controls using Hurco’s Windows-based WinMax software, which offers extensive graphics support.
This is useful for checking that the cycles are correct as programming progresses. Another benefit of WinMax is being able to merge conversational code with external data blocks for more-complex parts of a machining cycle generated using an external CAM system.
It was the ease of use of the Hurco control system that was the decisive factor in Riteway opting for this make of vertical machining centre in the early days, when a contract to manufacture aluminium carrier plates for stents was too much for the sub-contractor’s 2.5-D CNC milling machines and manual mills.
The directors knew Hurco’s representative Michael Gannon via a previous manufacturing company, and the first of what would become nine three-axis vertical machining centres was installed in 2007. A CNC indexing unit was also purchased and is swapped between the machines.
Mr Murphy, who at the time had no prior experience of using a CNC machine tool, confirmed that he was proficient with the control in just three days.
He says that since a lot of contracts involve small-batch production and even one-off prototypes, efficiency of programming is important to minimising down-time.
He also says that the after-sales service, training and support provided by Hurco from its High Wycombe headquarters in the UK are all good and are often handled by telephone; Riteway will sometimes e-mail drawings for advice on how best to approach a program.
The Hurco TMM8 turning centre has been particularly beneficial to Riteway’s operation since it was installed in 2009. It is equipped with an 8in chuck, 12 driven stations in the tool turret and a Hydrafeed short bar magazine for feeding stock up to 52mm in diameter.
Compared with pre-existing turning plant on site, this machine has at least halved production times across a range of turned components; it has also allowed Riteway to bring in-house some of the more-complex turn-milling work that it was sub-contracting. Tight tolerances are held, often down to ±10 or ±20µm.
In conclusion, Mr Donnellan says that the screen graphics in WinMax are particularly important when proving out turn-milling jobs. Rotating components have much more momentum than cutters on machining centres, so there is the potential for heavy collisions if a program is not correct.