Cutting tool provider Seco Tools UK recently installed two new DMG Mori multi-axis machine tools. The machines, a DMU85 monoBLOCK (5-axis machining centre) and a CTX1250 TC (mill-Turn machine) were installed at Seco’s state-of-the-art Technology Centre, in Alcester, in September 2015 for the company’s ‘Inspiration through Innovation’ Open House. The ‘significant investment’ in two DMG Mori machines have replaced an older 5-axis machine and mill-turn centre previously installed at Seco’s Technology Centre some years ago, and reflect Seco’s ambition to be the cutting tool solutions provider of choice for UK and Irish component manufacturers, the company says.
Explains Seco’s Managing Director, Richard Jelfs: “On one hand the Technology Centre serves as the in-house location where staff and customer training and machining/cutting demonstrations on new products takes place. The Technology Centre is also the perfect venue where customer-specific process improvement and turnkey solutions are designed, developed and proved-out by our engineers (in collaboration with customers) and, as was demonstrated recently, is a great resource for Open Houses, seminars etc.” However, the Technology Centre’s relevance and credibility with Seco staff and with UK and Irish manufacturers is very much dependant on the range and type of machine tools Seco has at its disposal at the Centre.
Precision manufacturers machining complex parts for the aerospace, medical, oil/gas, power generation and motorsport sectors (to name but a few), increasingly use and rely on the latest multi-axis machine tools to increase their productivity and improve their performance. “Many of these manufacturers have already invested (and are continuing to invest) in the latest advanced machine tools – and we, quite naturally, need the Technology Centre’s resources to replicate what’s being used in and by the market.”
The search to find the optimum 5-axis and mill-turn machine tool replacements for the Technology Centre that took in many machine tool providers involved much more than the just the machines themselves.
Comments Steve Finn, managing director DMG Mori UK on Seco’s investment in DMG Mori technology: “It is great news that we have such a prestigious reference site for our advanced 5-axis and mill-turn machines and the events that Seco Tools has planned (and is planning) to run at its Technology Centre in the months and years ahead will provide great opportunities for both companies to inform, educate and inspire manufacturers about our respective technologies.”
