Machining centres keep fishing reel maker on top

Chiron vertical machining centres are highlighted by British Fly Reels' managing director John Gall as having a crucial influence on BFR's global competitiveness

British Fly Reels (BFR), the Cornwall-based manufacturer of fishing reels, is using an array of world-class manufacturing philosophies to beat off the constant threat from Far Eastern competitors.

In the war to maintain high product quality and competitive prices, the company utilises an armoury of continual improvement philosophies, quality circles and Investor In People programmes, for example.

These complement an impressive manufacturing facility that embraces design and development, and extends through gear hobbing and injection moulding into aqueous washing, electrostatic painting and assembly.

Included in the myriad of production processes at the site in Falmouth, the Chiron vertical machining centre (VMC) section is highlighted by managing director John Gall as having a crucial influence on BFR's global competitiveness.

BFR's Chiron FZ12W High Speed Plus, for example, is enabling the company to cut machining times by half on certain parts, so it's no wonder John Gall describes this latest capital investment as "outstanding".

"We needed a machine that would allow us to compete with manufacturers in the Far East," he says.

"We needed a machine that could remove stock at high speed without creating burrs - and the High Speed Plus tackles the job effortlessly." Producing a range of fishing reel spools and bodies as either diecast or fully machined items (to suit differing markets/budgets), 95-employee BFR exports around 80 per cent of production with about 50 per cent of that going to customers in North America.

The company's cold chamber diecasting machines process LM6 aluminium while all CNC work is on bar stock of 6262, a high tensile, free-machining aluminium alloy.

All internal features like plastics and brass gears, and small spindles and springs, are made in-house - to maintain control and quality levels, and to give BFR the flexibility to meet varying demand by producing small batches Just-in-Time.

Alongside CNC lathes, a series of five Chiron machining centres are at the heart of BFR's production facility for these high-quality reels.

The machines have been installed progressively since 1994, after the company had been bought by US-based Orvis following a number of years under different owners since its foundation as Intrepid.

"Orvis was, and still is, our largest customer," comments John Gall, "and in the mid-90s, as our new owner, it encouraged our investment in cutting edge manufacturing technology to not only maintain the continuity and quality of supply but also, importantly, with an eye on helping us retain our competitiveness.

"We knew there was a better way to produce reels than by using bench pillar drills and needle files (until then, we had made only diecast and plastic injection moulded reels).

We started looking at CNC lathes and machining centres to satisfy increasing demand for products made from aircraft-specification aluminium.

The need was for repetitive, high-accuracy machining - and machining centres were the only answer." BFR soon recognised the advantages of Chiron - high spindle speeds, fast traverse rates and quick tool change - and, says John Gall, "their ability to deflash by performing circular interpolation in the Z axis".

BFR started doing its sums, and with the Chiron FZ12W offering X, Y and Z axes travels of 550 mm by 300 mm by 425 mm, and a table area of two x 660 mm by 350 mm - thus permitting up to four reel bodies to be loaded at a time - the justification made economic sense.

Supplied as a turnkey package with fixturing, tooling, programming and application engineering, the success of BFR's first Chiron on a variety of milling and drilling routines on the thin-wall components (down to 0.8 mm in places) has led to the purchase of a further four machines from Chiron Werke UK.

There are three additional FZ12Ws - one with a fourth axis rotary table - and the High Speed Plus.

These are all DNC-linked to an offline programming station.

Basically, the Chirons' sequence of operations is based around four-axis milling, drilling and tapping and area clearance, and the production of an average of 70 holes per spool.

Spools are processed in a cycle time of 4.2 mins; bodies take 6 mins including all four-axis work.

Tolerances are generally +/- 0.025 mm on bores and +/-0.15 mm elsewhere.

Throughput per machine averages 100 bodies and spools each shift.

Offering spindle speeds up to 20,000 revs/min, traverses of to 60 m/min in all axes and acceleration/deceleration of 2.2 secs as well as tool change time up to 1.9 sec, the Chirons' speed of operation and value for money were, of course, main considerations in BFR's choice.

"While the speed of these machines is fantastic; I've never seen anything like it," adds John Gall, "crucially, we also chose Chiron because we didn't want a compromise.

We saw plenty of VMCs that were good at either milling or drilling - but we could see that the Chiron excels at both.

"Flexibility was also key to machine selection, to enable any machine to process any reel style/size, using the same fixtures, programs and tooling.

Even with the High Speed Plus, we can quickly and easily swap the fixturing over from our first machine that was installed in 1994," he says.

"Because we were so impressed with the Chirons' performance, we went through a period of saying, 'If that part can be done on a Chiron, let's do it that way'.

Once we got over the initial euphoria, we increasingly began using the Chirons to satisfy a host of demanding production routines." For example, the fourth axis capability is used to good effect in producing the convex/concave features required on spools.

And in some cases the machines have reduced workpiece costs and parts count by machining-in features that previously required two or three separate parts." The investment in the High Speed Plus typifies BFR's continual improvement policy, which more recently has embraced the quest for BS EN ISO 9001 accreditation.

The company has also realised that it can successfully offer its comprehensive manufacturing and toolroom skills as an unrivalled single-source facility on a sub-contract basis to other OEMs.

Likewise, the recent use of quick change, soft jaw vice systems on the Chirons has brought further lead time reductions by enabling certain set-up and changeover times to be cut to minutes.

Such vision obviously keeps BFR to the fore, as John Gall says: "If we don't progress, we will never compete.

Just look at what we've achieved with the Chirons!".

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