Press Articles
HORN CUTTING TOOLS Ltd.
PRESS RELEASE
Tooling Application Story – Thread Milling
HORN THREAD MILLING MAXIMISES PRODUCTIVITY FOR DW ENGINEERING
Introduction of DCG three tooth thread milling tooling supplied by Horn Cutting Tools Ltd. Ringwood, has significantly improved production efficiency for DW Engineering Ltd of Burnbank, Hamilton. DW is a machining subcontractor specialising in high precision components produced in a diverse range of materials for a wide range of industry sectors.
The advance relates to high precision machining of aluminium components. They are sculpted from a 30mm thick base plate, with 226 ‘body’ components machined while remaining integral with the base to provide secure locations for further operations. Key among these are the generation of three identical internal M3 fine threads to be machined to a depth of 8.0 mm.
Prior to application of the Horn tooling DW Engineering used conventional machine tapping tools for this type of feature. It had several shortcomings as DW managing director David Watt explains. “The tapping process was quite slow, and it is also the case that the life of the available taps – at around 200 finished holes per tap - was insufficient for us to complete a full machining table load of 226 components/778 threaded holes without need for time consuming replacement of the tapping tools.”
In practice there were additional problems such as unclean threads and occasional tap breakages, dictating a need to keep the machining operation under constant observation.
“We tried a few alternatives before we became aware of the Horn DCG system. Mr Watt recalls. “Initially we had reservations based on the apparent delicacy of the tooling, its cost and our unfamiliarity of thread milling on such small features. In practice we were quickly convinced of its worth.”
All of the requirements on the company’s wish-list were found to be achievable. As well as a single three edged DCG tool being capable of completing multiple ‘batches’ of threads, a single batch can now be machined in 6 hours marking a reduction of 5 hours. Moreover, the threads produced are ‘bang on’ in terms of quality and cleanliness, and scrap is now an unknown entity on this job.
“A further big gain is in process reliability as it is now possible to carry out the threading process unmanned.’ Mr Watt concluded. ‘Moreover Horn thread milling tooling has subsequently found use on a number of other applications.”
