Product category:
Production Services
News Release from: Apperley Honing | Subject: Subcontract honing
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 05 July 2002
Subcontract honing service shows its
experience
Apperley Honing's specialist subcontract honing division has seen an 18% increase in sales over the past 12 months.
Apperley Honing's specialist subcontract honing division has seen an 18% increase in sales over the past 12 months The UK's largest independent honing company has achieved this despite a period of much reported doom and gloom for the manufacturing sector, and puts much of this success down to its 'can do' reputation
On the company's recent success, Charles Sanders, Managing Director, commented: "Whilst we have a modern range of plant and machinery to hand, we believe it's the expertise and in-depth knowledge we have developed over the past 39 years that makes all the difference.
This has been evident, as an increasing proportion of our subcontract work is for complicated one-off projects which require us to think innovatively when faced with awkward parameters".
An example of such an instance was the recent honing of two off 1.2m diameter, nickel-bronze alloy propellers which were urgently required by Stephenson Engineering of Farnham for a high-speed ferry in dry dock.
Sanders explained: "Honing is often the last process in a manufacturing schedule so we're used to turning projects around very quickly.
In this case we needed to hone two off 145mm-diameter 420mm-long bores in a particularly awkward shape - and they needed to be honed on a while-you-wait basis, as the client's driver was on site throughout the tight-deadline job.
Having to hone to a tolerance of 0.008mm with no setup components to practice on, we had to come up with a solution that worked first time - and fast".
The shape of the propellers meant that they could not be accommodated on modern vertical honing machines and the 420mm bores were too short to be honed on horizontal machines.
(Apperley machines can hone lengths up to 15m.) Furthermore, with only two components to hone, building specialist machinery or cradles for the propellers would have been cost prohibitive - let alone time consuming, so Apperley opted to use a manually powered machine that could be easily manoeuvred to where the propellers lay.
A 35-year-old Delapena Beamstroker (colloquially known as the 'nodding donkey' because of its movement arc) was used.
The propellers, each weighing 385kg, were simply strapped to their pallets and then honed using Delapena 'Standard' head tooling on the Beamstroker.
Sanders added: "The Beamstroker is a very hands-on manual machine to operate.
As such it requires a great deal of skill to hold such tight tolerances.
With valuable components such as these, experience counts as you have to get them right first time".
Over the past two years Apperley has successfully diversified into machine manufacture.
With the sale of machinery such as its 17m J8 twin-spindle honing machine and its F108 diatomaceous earth filtration system, the company's turnover on plant sales exceeded GBP 300,000 in 2001 alone.
Sanders added: "This success in the machinery market has undoubtedly stemmed from our experience in subcontract work.
With this expertise, we know exactly what our plant clients want their machines to do for them".
Both Apperley Honing and Delapena are based in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
Delapena, which has over the past 35 years developed and expanded its world-renowned stable of small and medium sized machines, has also developed a subcontract division for its UK customers.
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