A recently installed Studer S33 CNC universal cylindrical grinding machine — supplied by
Micronz Ltd — is helping the staff at Ricardo Driveline and Transmission Systems to maintain their high-precision grinding standards.
Located in Warwickshire, the company is focused on the design, development and niche manufacture of driveline and transmission systems.
This world-class Ricardo facility has been responsible for an extremely wide range of products on a global basis, from cost-optimised manual transmissions for developing markets to advanced high-performance systems such as that used by the Aston Martin Valkyrie.
Given the importance of high-precision grinding to its manufacturing activities, the Ricardo facility in Leamington Spa operates four high-specification Studer CNC universal cylindrical grinding machines, including the recently installed S33 model, which is currently being used for the high-precision grinding of development and prototype components, as well as relatively small production runs.
Victor Smith, the production team leader at Ricardo Driveline and Transmission Systems, said: “When compared to the other machines that we considered, the Studer S33 proved to be the ideal CNC universal cylindrical grinding machine for our needs; and considering its impressive specification, we were surprised that it cost only marginally more than less capable competitors.
“Further factors that influenced our buying decision were the consistent high-quality of the components that we grind on our existing three Studer machines and their outstanding reliability — plus the excellent after-sales support from Studer and the company’s UK agent, Micronz.
“The components that we grind have extremely demanding technical specifications regarding parameters such as surface finish, roundness and dimensional tolerances.”
He added: “Our new Studer S33 is now helping us to adhere to all of these grinding requirements; and even though our department has a large overall throughput of grinding work, we grind small numbers of development and prototypes parts and undertake relatively limited production runs, so need to make quite a lot of job changeovers in each working day.
“However, our new Studer S33 allows us to move rapidly from one job to another, minimising down times and maintaining high productivity levels.”