Bowers & Jones on a roll with VTL from Mills CNC

Mills CNC has supplied Bowers & Jones, a specialist in high-precision roll tooling and equipment for steel and copper mill customers across the world, with a new DN Solutions VTR 1216F – a large-capacity, wide-column, ram-type vertical turning lathe (VTL). The new machine operates at the company’s 15,000 sq ft manufacturing facility in Bilston, near Wolverhampton. It sits alongside three other machines supplied by Mills CNC over the past four years: a Doosan Puma 5100B lathe (installed in 2020); a Doosan DNM 750 II vertical machining centre with fourth-axis unit (2021); and a DN Solutions GT 3100L box-guideway lathe (2023).

Says Jane Sommerville, Managing Director at Bowers & Jones: “We’ve built strong relationships with Mills CNC. The depth and breadth of the machine tool range they supply, combined with the company’s first-class pre- and after-sales support, means that when we’re looking to invest in new machine tool technologies, Mills is invariably our first port of call.”

Bowers & Jones, under new ownership since 2020, is committed to continuous improvement and, as such, regularly monitors and benchmarks the performance of its manufacturing operations in order to identify and address production inefficiencies and bottlenecks. The roll-out of the company’s improvement programme, initiated by the change of ownership, has been instrumental in Bowers & Jones streamlining and strengthening its in-house machining capacity and capabilities. The company sees investment as a route to planned and sustainable growth. The acquisition of new machine tools from Mills CNC has been instrumental in helping Bowers and Jones strengthen its supply chain relationships with existing customers and secure new roll tooling business contracts.

The new investment rationale

Bowers & Jones supplies its high-performance roll tooling and equipment to steel and copper mills in the UK and throughout the world. The company recently made inroads into the US steel market and, via direct sales approaches aided by a third-party agent, is actively expanding its presence in North America. Indeed, the company’s new VTR 1216F investment was made to meet the needs of a recently acquired US customer that offers products such as rail I-beam sections, medium bar sections and angled bar sections for use in the US rail and construction sectors.

“We needed a new large-capacity vertical lathe specifically to machine large-diameter straightening rings for the customer,” says Sommerville. “It would also take pressure off an older, large-capacity Berry & Binns horizontal lathe that we acquired some years earlier. We approached Mills and two other suppliers to discuss our requirements and, looking at the proposed investment package as a whole – including cost, availability, machine design and configuration, operator familiarity, and aftersales support – decided to place the order with Mills.”

The FANUC-controlled 50-inch chuck VTR 1216F offers a maximum turning diameter of 1600 mm and a maximum turning height of 950 mm. Equipped with a thermally-stable 45 kW/400 rpm/20,557 Nm spindle, a servo-driven 12-tool ATC and an quad tool holder with fast indexing that enables the use of four tools directly via the ram, Mills CNC says the VTR 1216F delivers fast processing speeds, improved machining flexibility and high accuracy. The machine supplied to Bowers & Jones also includes a working platform for quick and easy part load/unload and operator visibility, a manual four-jaw chuck, linear scales and an automatic tool setter.

Straightening rings, like all roll tool types, are performance-critical components. They find use in metal-forming processes to enable metal stock to pass through one or more pairs of rolls, located on stands. This process reduces the material’s thickness, making it uniform and consistent and, where required, gives the rolled material additional mechanical and application-specific properties required by the ultimate end user.

Bowers & Jones machines straightening rings on its VTR 1216F from D2, a high-carbon, high-chromium molybdenum-vanadium alloy tool steel that is highly abrasive. Machining takes place from solid round bar (cut to size) in relatively small batches. Cycle times are long with turning operations performed at low rpm.

The company roughs the rings on its Berry & Binns lathe before sending them away for heat treatment. The heat treatment process gives the D2 rings their compression strength, wear resistance, toughness and shock resistance – all crucially important for delivering high performance and long life in a demanding steel mill environment. When the rings return, the VTR performs finishing operations to tight geometrical and dimensional tolerances, with super-fine surface finishes.

Bowers & Jones works collaboratively with its customers. The company can design, manufacture and test roll tooling for new products, as well as improve the efficiencies of established and existing product lines.

Explains Sommerville: “Our high-quality designed and machined rolls may cost a little more, but they are an investment and help customers save time and money by reducing re-profiling and replacement costs. End users can limit potential downtime caused by tooling changeovers and help mills keep rolling.”

The future

Bowers & Jones’ current five-year plan (2020 to 2025) is coming to an end after delivering on all its objectives. The company will roll out its new five-year plan shortly. Additional upgrades to its machine shop are planned and the company is looking to capitalise further on new business opportunities in the US.