The Swiss company Fraisa is a family-owned business that offers its customers a complete range of solid round tools such as end mills, drills and taps.

The company is well established in Europe, and in the last 10 years, it has entered the USA and Chinese markets.

Fraisa (www.fraisa.com) CEO and president Josef Maushart said: “I think opportunities in the tool and cutter market are significant.

I expect growth of 2-3% a year, and especially high growth in the solid round tools market, which is why we are completely renewing our tap production facilities.

"We knew that providing taps was a unique selling proposition for us, as most of our competitors only manufacture end mills and drills.

"However, with high labour costs in Switzerland, we needed to incorporate automation into the manufacturing process.”

The classic way to grind a tap is to first grind the flute, and then grind the thread on a separate machine. However, Fraisa selected an Anca TapXcell (www.anca.com), which combines these operations on a single machine and allows the entire production process to be automated.

Fraisa also wanted the flexibility to change the product without people being involved.

Anca’s engineering project manager, Amelinda Ilardi, said: “To remain competitive in high-cost labour markets like Switzerland, Fraisa wanted a machine that could grind multiple tap types unmanned for 50hr.

"There was no solution on the market, but having collaborated with Anca in the past, Fraisa approached us to develop the technology it needed.

“To enable the machine to run unmanned we needed an in-process measurement capability to ensure grinding stability; we used a Renishaw MP250 touch probe that can measure the thread pitch diameter to an accuracy of ±0.002mm, thereby ensuring that every batch of taps is of consistently high quality.

"Moreover, not only can the machine run unmanned for 50hr, it is linked to Fraisa’s ERP system — and it can be remotely monitored using our RedaX system.

This keeps Fraisa’s staff aware of the machine’s progress and of any issues or faults that need to be addressed; it can also be used to track the productivity and up-time of multiple Anca machines.”