Starting out from fairly humble beginnings in 1937, under the railway arches, London’s Camden Town,
DYN-Metal has grown into one of the largest suppliers of continuous and centrifugal cast products, specialising standard bronzes and its own DYN Processed Bronzes. All of which are cast in-house at its North Acton foundry, where it moved to in 1977.
Following the relocation, the family-owned business recognised that simply providing cast billets for other to machine was not sustainable, so a series of investments were made, which have continued to this day as the company has looked to develop its own machining capability.
This has allowed it to attract a worldwide customer base for its own products such as high-resistance, maintenance-free bearings used in a variety of industries including offshore/marine, gearbox refurbishment, oil and gas, automotive, quarrying/mining, aerospace and ship repair.
While much of the machine tool investment went on finish machining processes, giving the company the capability of machining castings up to 1.8m diameter and weighing up to 5 tonnes, one area had fallen behind — proof machining.
This is where the raw castings from the foundry are pre-machined removing up to 100mm of material from the outside and inside diameters, depending on product and cast material. This work was being carried out on manual turret machines, one, which current managing director Max Limbourg described as being ‘World War 2 surplus’. So, it was time to bring things up-to-date.
He continued: “We needed to improve productivity in our proof machining department in order to increase throughput and consistency. Our manual machines have served us well and we will retain some of them, but they are relatively inefficient and require skills that are often hard to find.”
The search for replacements involved looking at second hand and new machines, but it was a combination of the ProtoTRAK control and a UK supplier for support that saw DYN Metal settle on two ProTURN lathes supplied by Devon-based
XYZ Machine Tools.
The machines are an XYZ ProTURN RLX 555 with a 1.75m bed length and, the largest machine in the ProTURN range, an XYZ ProTURN RLX 780 with a 3m bed length and swing of 780mm over the bed; both were installed towards the end of 2021.
RX ProtoTRAK controlThe machines feature the latest RX ProtoTRAK control system with its touchscreen interface and innovative conversational programming capabilities. One key feature of the control welcomed by DYN Metal was its TRAKing capability, which allows the operator to use the electronic handwheels to prove out the program; winding the wheels will move the tool along the programmed path at whatever speed the operator is comfortable with. Once happy, the operator can revert to full CNC mode at the push of a button.
Mr Limbourg added: “Coming from a manual machines background, our operator, Peter, had limited programming experience so it was a bit of a learning curve for him. However, with support from XYZ Machine Tools he is now producing one-off components in a matter of minutes.”
While proof machining is relatively straightforward, the two XYZ ProTURN lathes are delivering significant savings both in time and material, the latter being particularly relevant given escalating material prices for the specialist alloys used by DYN Metal.
In terms of machining time to produce a batch of 100 rings on the old manual machines could have taken up to two-three days, these are now completed in around one day due to the speed of set-up and machining efficiencies.
A further advantage is that with the addition of the ProtoTRAK control the operator can now run both machines simultaneously, creating even greater efficiencies, while benefitting from the added health and safety gains of an automated machine with guarding.
Mr Limbourg concluded: “While these are our first machines from XYZ Machine Tools I am sure they will not be the last. Overall, we are very happy with the machines, and the technical support when we have needed it has been very quick and efficient. When we have needed face-to-face help XYZ has been there for us.”