Mollart Engineering’s deep-hole-drilling expertise has captured international orders worth over £5 million, putting the company “well into its machine tool build programme” for 2018-19.

These orders, taken in April, are from existing North American and Chinese customers and have all been won against strong European and US competition.

Ian Petitt, managing director of the Chessington-based company (www.mollart.com), said: “We were judged against most major competitors in our sector.

"However, what became a major factor in each of the orders won was the proven overall machine reliability of Mollart’s installations and their high level of utilisation.

"Our reputation for application development and levels of productivity, aided by our German specialist tooling partner Botek, was also an important factor.”

An order worth some £2.5 million from one of the largest independent automotive manufacturers in North America will see Mollart supply four special-purpose four- and six-spindle gun-drilling centres for producing oil galleries in transmission shafts that are used in the latest generation of nine- and10-speed gearboxes.

A further US order taken by Mollart is for a Prismabore PRB 25 six-axis combination gun-drilling and machining centre. This will be used for the deep-hole drilling of cooling holes in steel moulds at a US mould specialist.

The machine has a ‘single-cycle’ capability to perform conventional drilling, counterboring, milling, tapping and thread milling processes. Significant in the specification of the hybrid machine design is the use of a heavy-duty CAT-50 spindle and the added flexibility provided by its 90-tool magazine.

Adding to the success of Mollart’s gun-drilling installations in the fuel injection sector in China, where the company has 60 machines, is an order for a further two-spindle Drillsprint LD2-750 machine to drill holes in forged alloy steel diesel fuel rails.