Subcontractor Finds That 30-Taper Machining Centre Is the Clear Choice for Volume Production of Commercial Aerospace Components

Installed at the end of March 2023, the machine is the subcontractor’s first 30-taper machine and is being put to work producing aluminium parts for the aerospace, Formula One, high-end automotive, scientific, medical and other industries. The material currently accounts for about 60% of prismatic component production in the factory. However, it so happened that the first job put on the Brother involved the production of a batch of 304 stainless steel pivot blocks for an aerospace customer.

It was at this point that Phil Smith, joint managing director of SPE with his brother Gary, realised that he had been harbouring an incorrect view that 30-taper machines are unable to cut tough metals productively. He is now convinced that modern Brother machines with their high-torque spindles are much more robust than he thought, capable of cutting stainless steels, titanium and other difficult alloys – just not heavy cuts in those materials all day long; that type of work would be put on a 40-taper machine. Being able to tackle a wide variety of materials ideally suits a machine to production in a subcontracting environment, where the mix of work coming in is unpredictable.

Mr Smith said there are twelve 40-taper 5-axis machines in operation on SPE’s shop floor, some with automatic twin pallet change (2APC) and others with multi-pallet magazines. These reflect the company’s decision in 2016, when it moved into a £1.2 million, 26,000 sq ft factory, to target more complex prismatic machining work.

There are also eight 40-taper 3-axis VMCs on site, some with a fourth CNC axis, that are between 10 and 15 years old and these will gradually be replaced by more capable and productive plant. Mr Smith predicts that the 4-axis Brother will do the work of two of these older models. It produced the aerospace pivot block, for example, in two operations in a total cycle time of 15 minutes, whereas one of the older machines took 38 minutes to produce the part in four operations. Moreover there is now far less workpiece handling and work-in-progress, as well as minimal risk of accumulating dimensional errors through repeated set-ups.

Apart from speed and versatility, another facet of the Brother machine that Mr Smith particularly appreciates, especially with energy prices presently so high, is that the 30-taper machine draws typically 80% less power than a 40-taper VMC. SPE’s electricity bill more than trebled from £9,000 to £28,000 per month between December 2022 and May 2023. So it is clear that low energy consumption is no longer merely an added bonus but just as critical to manufacturing parts cost-effectively as fast cycle times.