Anyone who has watched an episode of the BBC programme Inside the Factory will appreciate the speed at which packaging machinery operates.

Ensuring the performance and accuracy of this equipment, particularly bottling plants, is a speciality of Belgium-based Macovak, which manufactures precision ‘format’ parts that are used to manoeuvre and position bottles during the filling process.

To help meet its production needs, Macovak has invested in machines that enable the cost-effective production of low-volume parts.

The most recent of these machines is an XYZ ProTurn SLX 425 lathe (www.xyzmachinetools.com), supplied by Crispyn Machines — XYZ Machine Tools’ distributor in Belgium.
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Didier Gillain, managing director of Macovak, said: “After just one day of training on the ProtoTrak control, our operators were fully in tune with it and had the machine operating on production work within hours.

“Such is the simplicity of this control that you don’t need knowledge of G or M codes to create even complex parts quickly and easily.

“Furthermore, as our business revolves around problem solving for customers, we need to be able to react quickly, knowing that the parts we machine are right first time.”

He also says Macovak is seeing substantial time savings, thanks to the combination of the ProtoTrak control and the ProTurn SLX 425 lathe.

“While we haven’t documented the time savings, we know that — compared to a conventional lathe — we can machine curves or angles in much shorter times, with better quality.

“Even compared to our CNC lathes, we notice that programming is quicker.”