For Robert Nibbs, a passion for rifles has evolved from childhood enthusiasm (he joined his first rifle club at the age of 14 and has represented Team GB) through a professional career to his founding of a small rifle-manufacturing business that he has been running for the past 26 years.

Located in rural Somerset, the business designs and manufactures high-end target and professional rifles, using a blend of innovative manufacturing techniques and highly productive processes.

At the end of 2017, Mr Nibbs was having tool-life issues when producing a component from 303 stainless steel. The solid-carbide end mills he was using were struggling to cope with the skin on the stainless-steel material — and the intermittent machining process.

In fact, Mr Nibbs was only able to produce about 25 parts before each tool failed, resulting in high tool costs and the inconvenience of repeated tool changes.

Recalling his introduction to Tamworth-based Industrial Tooling Corporation (ITC — www.itc-ltd.co.uk) after visiting a MACH show at the NEC, Mr Nibbs says: “I was familiar with the ITC brand and made an enquiry via its Web site.

“ITC engineers came to review the stainless-steel components, and we initially trialled a Widia M1200HF high-feed face mill, but it was a little too aggressive for the machine.

“When we tried Widia M200 button end mills, the results were exceptional.”

The 40mm-diameter cutter with WP25-PM grade inserts instantly ramped up productivity and cut tooling costs.

ITC’s Matt White said: “With the M200, we were able to increase the feed rate from 0.1mm per tooth to 0.3mm per tooth, cutting the cycle times by more than 50%.

"For all of his machining processes, Mr Nibbs would use the Microloc work-holding system to set up to 20 parts in a single cycle; using the M200 slashed the cycle time from over 1hr to 35min.

“Moreover, he was able to leave the machine to run while moving to other tasks, knowing that the tooling would finish the cycle intact.”

As well as cutting tool costs, the time lost to changeovers was drastically reduced. Mr White said: “The solid-carbide end mills would need to be replaced after 30 components.

However, the 40mm-diameter M200 with four insert seats has six-edged double-sided inserts, with a location lug for precision indexing.

"This cutter not only significantly reduced the time for tool changeovers and set-ups but also reduced tooling costs.

“Each edge of the inserts could achieve the same performance as the previous solid-carbide end mill, but with 12 edges, the M200 is dramatically more cost-efficient.

“For finish machining, we recommended a Widia M1200; and with a 0.2mm depth of cut, the M1200 has already machined over 300 parts without needing to change an insert edge.”

Further trials

The success of the ITC Widia face-milling tools opened the door to trial other ITC products on the company’s Haas VF2-SSYT three-axis machining centre.

Mr Nibbs said: “The performance of the Widia face mills was such that we introduced the Widia 49N9 solid-carbide three-flute rougher for the profiling of pockets on chassis sections made of 6082-T6 aluminium alloy.

“We had previously used solid-carbide end mills from two well-known brands with limited success.

“ITC area sales engineer Tom Lindley suggested running the Widia 49N9 at 12,000rev/ min and just shy of 8m/min at a full 24mm depth of cut and a 10mm step-over.

"These parameters were at least 50% greater than I had used with the previous tools, and I was somewhat apprehensive, but the Widia tool cut through the aluminium like the proverbial ‘hot knife through butter’.

"It also produced a manageable chip size — and reduced the chassis blank from 4.1kg to 1.7kg in just 75sec.”

Following these initial trials, Mr Nibbs is now also using ITC 2041 and 2052 solid-carbide square-end tools, as well as the 3041, 3051, 2201 and 3081 corner-radius end mills on aluminium parts.

Highlighting another example of the productivity gains from ITC’s aluminium tools, he said: “We used to manufacture aluminium thumb wheel adjustors in 3min with tools from our previous tooling supplier on an earlier machine, but after installing our Haas machining centre and using ITC’s 3081 radius end mill for profiling the thumb wheels, we reduced the cycle time to 45sec.

"Our use of three-flute 20mm-diameter 3051-series cutters with a 0.5mm radius and the 10mm-diameter 3041-series cutters with a 3mm radius have both made similar improvements on a scope stand project — and they achieved excellent surface finishes.

"Our rifles comprise over 30 major components, plus a huge variety of smaller parts.

"We offer a range of variants, with three stock configurations for different action types; there are also surface-finish and colour options.”

Machining stainless

For all his stainless-steel components, Mr Nibbs is using 10 and 16mm-diameter tools from ITC’s 4777 solid-carbide end mill range for most profiling operations.

For hole making, he is using Widia’s VDS drills in combination with the TTMM range of ITC’s Mini Threadmills.

“All the ITC tools I’ve used have achieved what the engineers have said they would.

"As a small-business owner, I don’t have time to endlessly trial new tools in the hope of achieving success, so the recommendations of ITC and the results of using the company’s tools have been invaluable to my business.

"Within 12 months, I have changed most of my tooling and ITC now supplies almost 90% of our tools, resulting in an improvement in productivity of at least 30% in just 12 months.”

Mr Nibbs produces more than 50 rifles a year. He says these are “instruments of true precision” and ‘accurate’ over distances up to 2,000 yards.

“During my professional shooting career, I spent 40hr on training every week. It has been the years of training and working with rifles that set my business and product range apart from others and put them in the very top echelon of the market.

“A precision rifle is all about balance, not weight; the balance and the recoil action set high-end rifles apart.

"Controlling the recoil action and efficiently using the energy expended from the action to benefit the user are all about the application of physics.

“To continually develop and enhance rifles is something that requires considerable design and development effort.

"By introducing ITC to my business and reducing my production times, I now have more time to spend on designing and trialling new components and techniques.”