"The EN26 material is very tough to work with," said Mr Pain. "It's not a material that we'd want to run unmanned. The major problems are extensive wear on the cutting tips and thread rolling heads. For this project we had to change each of these after machining every 60 pieces. The tool wear can be colossal when working with such materials, but to deliver turned components that will reliably operate in extreme conditions, this kind of tooling cost is unavoidable."

Acro has also undertaken parts for the oil industry, machined in titanium.

"Titanium is a hard material and we've found that we have to machine it using neat cutting oil, but the real concern is that it has a low flash point and can catch fire very easily. Its swarf burns with an intense bright white flame," said Fred. "We've found that we cannot run machines unmanned with this material and it is also advisable to have an automatic fire extinguisher fitted to the machine as well as an automatic broken tool detector. Having said this, titanium gives a nice finish and the components perform well in the field. We've found the titanium work very rewarding. Working with these harder materials such as Titanium, Stainless 316 and Monel used to be quite a challenge, however, we now track the latest cutting technologies and have also developed a number of new techniques to be able to deliver production volumes quickly and of a consistent quality."