Having secured a new contract to supply machined castings for an automatic gearbox to Ford’s transmission facility near Bordeaux, France, Amtek Aluminium Castings (Witham) Ltd found itself with a requirement for washing and deburring these components.
Amtek Aluminium Castings — part of the £2 billion Amtek Group, with customers almost exclusively in the automotive sector — supplies machined castings to every Ford plant in the world. However, this latest project came to fruition when Ford America decided to re-open a transmission assembly facility near Bordeaux to produce a new six-speed automatic gearbox. Ford North America turned to Amtek for an additional 130,000 machined castings annually, supplied from within Europe.
While Amtek could accommodate the casting and machining requirements of the contract with existing technology, the Ford specification stipulated that the components had to be delivered in a clean and burr-free condition straight to the assembly line. Amtek already had several component washing systems, bit it did not have a deburring capability that could handle the required volume of parts. Project manager Ken Worsfold said: “We had a relatively short space of time — around eight months — from winning the contract to being in production, so my initial response to this washing and deburring requirement was to contact our existing suppliers of washing systems. While both could supply machines and automation capable of meeting the volumes, lead times were currently far longer than eight months; and at our volumes, the equipment proposed was not cost-effective.”
Mr Worsfold subsequently contacted Christchurch-based Ellesco Ltd
(www.ellesco.co.uk), which proposed a Sugino Jet Clean Centre. “I knew nothing of Sugino, but research and the information provided by Ellesco convinced me that it was a viable technical solution for our requirement. It was also cost-effective — plus the company could deliver the machine and all the fixturing we required within a six-month lead time.”
High-pressure benefits
The machine in question is a Sugino JCC-W6650TE Jet Clean Centre, which uses water to a maximum pressure of 500 bar (7,252 psi) to deburr and wash components. Built in Japan by Sugino, it is the first machine of its type to be installed in the UK. Apart from the high pressure, the Jet Clean Centre has several other key benefits that attracted Amtek to it; these include the use of a Fanuc 21i-MB control with robot interface, a trunnion-type A axis that allows components to be accessed on all faces in a single operation, a six-position turret to which a variety of cleaning nozzles can be attached, and a turntable that allows one part to be loaded while another is being cleaned and deburred.
“The similarity between the configuration of the Sugino machine and a conventional vertical machining centre was a big attraction, as programming of the machine and its general look and operation made the familiarisation process very easy when the machine was installed. The configuration also provides an extremely flexible deburring solution for us, as we can quickly change from any one of the three part variations with virtually no down-time,” says Mr Worsfold. “Another bonus was the fact that we had Ellesco to call on if needed — plus Sugino has a European support centre.”
Sugino also assisted Amtek by designing and manufacturing a single letterbox-style fixture that can be used for the full family of components included in the new contract. A key feature of the fixture is the air detection system, which ensures that the component is correctly located and clamped; this is vital when such high pressures are involved. Once the component is clamped, the machine table is rotated and the part is taken into the working area where it is washed at high pressure to remove any swarf; the turret then indexes to present specific nozzles to deburr individual features on the component. Once these operations have been completed, the part is rotated out of the working area and dried by a blast of compressed air.
Mr Worsfold says the design of the Jet Clean Centre is ideally suited to the larger volumes found in the automotive sector, and he is confident that it could handle around a 25% increase in throughput if the need arose. In conclusion, Ellesco sales manager John-Paul Henson-Spiers said: “Amtek is one of the world’s leading Tier One automotive suppliers. The company required a machine and process that was not only cost-effective and efficient but would also deliver consistently burr-free and clean components. Our ability to work alongside them to deliver the end result, including all the support and training that an investment of this type demands, will hopefully lead to a long and productive working partnership.”