News And Updates
Article 09: High performance workholding solution ordered at Southern Manufacturing
High performance workholding solution ordered at Southern Manufacturing Based in Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, the UK facility of Separator Spares International (SSI) Ltd is part of a global group of companies that make up the largest independent manufacturer supplying the marine and power industries with spare parts for separators, plate heat exchangers, back flushing filters, fresh water evaporators and triple screw low pressure pumps. These companies have manufacturing centres in the UK, Poland and Holland, having been established for more than three decades with a combined turnover in excess of 20 million Euros. Initially established in the UK the group has enjoyed rapid expansion over the years, with the UK facility specialising in the filtration and pumping arm of the business. A visit to the recent Southern Manufacturing show resulted in the company placing an order a new Hainbuch Spanntop Nova Combi pull-back size 80 collet chuck. The workholding solution ordered at the event also includes a new quick change jaw adaption that allows the chuck to be efficiently changed to a 3-jaw set up to hold raw material larger than the 80 mm diameter maximum collet size. “With the use of collets custom ground to suit the finished ground stock bar sizes used, we are able to reduce set-up times by around 30 minutes per batch. We can remove the need to continually bore soft jaws. Production times will be reduced by as much as 3 minutes per component as the need to ‘clock in’ each bar has been negated,” says SSI machine shop foreman, Alan Thompson. A manufacturing concentricity tolerance of <0.012 mm is required by the machine shop for each bar loaded into the previous 3-jaw chuck with soft jaws, so it had to be checked and adjusted before machining could begin. The Hainbuch Spanntop Nova Combi pull-back collet chuck provides a concentricity tolerance of better than 10 micron as standard. “The quick change jaw module ordered by SSI converts a collet chuck into a jaw chuck, enabling the 80 mm chuck, for example, to accommodate workpiece diameters of up to 195 mm. Following removal of the standard Hainbuch collet, the chuck collet acts as three master jaws with serrations aiding location accuracy and stroke adjustment. Location is again via the central screw and the jaw module is available for 65, 80 and 100 mm Hainbuch Combi pull-back chucks,” explains Leader’s Managing Director Mark Jones.