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Mr Evans recently quoted an aircraft hydraulics component in stainless steel that was previously quoted at £118 which could now be supplied for £85. There is a good chance that PG Technology will win this work next time around.

Another mill-turn job that will shortly take advantage of the 11kW milling spindle on the Multus is a stainless steel, eccentric cylindrical component that currently needs four operations on a lathe and a machining centre. It will be machined in two  operations and to very high accuracy, the position of some drilled holes being tied up to three microns relative to the bore centreline.

  Installed at the end of August 2006, the Multus was first used for pure turning applications to give the operators a chance to familiarise themselves with the Okuma OSP P200L control and the machine's 7- axis CNC technology – X, Z,Y, B, C1,  C2 and W (longitudinal travel of the opposed spindle).

On these jobs, the combination of the 15kW turning spindle, HSK A-63 tooling, 40m/min rapid traverse in X and Z and synchronous pick-up by the opposed spindle has on average allowed PG Technology to halve  both the number of separate operations and manufacturing times, according to Mr Evans.

Concurrent with the new mill-turn centre installation, PG Technology purchased several seats of EdgeCam software version 11 from Pathtrace to generate complex cutter paths from designs created within, or imported into the Mitcham factory.

A further development will be relocation of the factory in the first quarter of 2007 to new freehold premises nearby in Mitcham. This will see the present 24-hour, 5 days-a-week operation go to 24/7 working, subject to recruitment of extra skilled people, which Mr Evans complains is always a challenge.

He concluded: "The Okuma Multus has already strengthened production of rotational components. It brings turning in line with the highly advanced machining centre capacity we have.

"It will help in our goal to become the best supplier in the UK of machined parts, on time and to the right quality. Our traditional strongholds of supplying to the semiconductor, motorsport, aerospace and automotive industries are already starting to expand into the medical and defence sectors."

www.pgtechnology.co.uk