Hertfordshire-based Plastic Turned Parts (www.plasticturnedparts.co.uk), a leading supplier of specialist plastic engineering services, has purchased two new Citizen sliding-head lathes.

This brings the company’s investment in 2018 to over £400,000, with a total of four new Citizen machines being installed this year — all featuring LFV technology (Low Frequency Vibration) that allows swarf to be controlled precisely.

The two latest machines, a Citizen L20 and a Citizen B16E, increases PTP’s total number of CNC lathes to 11, all of which are used solely for the machining of engineered plastic components.

The company fills the volume niche where injection moulding is not viable due to time and cost restraints — such as quantities up to 150,000 and beyond — or where moulding is simply not an option.

Managing director Jonathan Newis said: “Everything we machine here is plastic, and we can achieve much greater dimensional accuracy, with no concerns over shrinkage.

“Customers are seeing distinct advantages to having plastic parts machined rather than moulded — mainly around the cost and timescale relating to manufacturing mould tools, but also the consistent quality that machining can bring.

This is reflected in a very strong order book.

“As we operate Kanban systems with many of our customers, we have an insight into future order books, so we can see that the next eight to 10 months are extremely positive.

“This level of interest and continued growth gives us the confidence to make these investments in capital equipment, as well as recruiting two new people — a setter and an operator.”