When it was founded in 1980 the company was using cam autos to produce parts for the white goods industry. By the late 1990s it was operating 30 Tornos cam autos on batches of up to 1 million parts. With the electronics sector growing in sophistication, parts became more and more complex and required an increasing amount of manual machining.

 “In the late '90s our orders for electronic connectors were demanding ever tightening tolerances with growing complexity that could not be fully met by our cam machines. We realised that we needed intricate parts to come off the machines complete,” says Mr Benson. This led the company to start investing in CNC sliding head machines that could produce parts in one hit.

When its core electronics business declined Benson was able to use its Tornos Deco CNC machines to diversify into sectors such as hydraulics, automotive, and medical equipment.

Benson now exports to low cost countries that include China, Poland, the Czech Republic and Brazil, and lights-out machining has allowed it to stay competive on cost while retaining the required quality on components such as hydraulic plungers, medical screws and PCB connectors.

“Our cam autos still play a major role in our business and they are still used for long series runs of relatively simplistic parts. However, the skills for these machines; like the technology itself is fading fast and we have to gradually phase out the machines for higher specification machines that will maintain and increase our competitive edge,” says Mr Benson.

www.bensoneng.ie