Global engineering technologies company Renishaw installed five more Cincom CNC sliding-headstock turning centres supplied by Citizen Machinery (www.citizenmachinery.co.uk) in December, raising its tally of lathes from the supplier to 58.

Three of the latest 12mm-capacity Cincom B12 lathes (fitted with Iemca Elite 112 bar magazines) were installed at Renishaw’s Miskin plant in South Wales, where 20 Citizen sliding-head turn-mill centres were already in use, while the other two went to the company’s Stonehouse factory in Gloucestershire.

Senior production engineer Robert Horsley said: “The latest investment in Citizen lathes, which raised the number we use by nearly 10%, was driven by increased world-wide demand for our measurement technology.

"The B12 lathes are mainly devoted to the ultra-fast turning and milling of 303 stainless-steel bar to make styli and other components for our probes, which are needed in large volumes.

"We normally produce a month’s worth for stock, which can be anything from 1,200 to 30,000 parts, before we change over a machine to start a new batch.

"Run times are at east 8hr. All of our Cincom turning centres have live tooling, and most are twin-spindle models to enable single-hit production.

"However, we also have three single-spindle F-series lathes of 12 and 16mm capacity in Miskin dating back to the mid-1980s.

"They still make high quality parts in relatively low volumes, such as those needed for some of our metal 3-D printers, position encoders, laser calibration products and spectrometers.”

Chris Pockett, head of communications for Renishaw, said: “We have standardised on Citizen sliding-head turning machines since the 1980s, when the company demonstrated what was then ground-breaking technology.

“The commonality of lathe layout ensures ease of training and complete flexibility for our production engineering staff to develop processes and program any machine.”