Subcontractor reinvests in automated five-axis machining

Allan Carabine, owner and Managing Director of Milton Keynes subcontractor MK Precision, visited the MACH exhibition in Birmingham earlier this year with a clear intention to invest in additional CNC machinery and automation that would further improve his firm’s manufacturing efficiency. On the last day of the show, he duly placed an order for a Hurco VMX42SRTi five-axis machining centre and a PC25 Kawasaki robot cell. It was the first time that the supplier had exhibited a machine tending cell based on a six-axis industrial robot.

Allan is committed to being an early adopter of the latest technology. In fact, the Hurco ProCobot ProFeeder-X 10-drawer system currently loading his VMX30UHSi five-axis machining centre was, in 2021, the first Hurco ProCobot installed in the UK.

Now an established product within the Hurco range, the ProCobot benefitted in the early days from Allan’s feedback, which enabled Hurco engineers to make improvements to the design and software that today make it a robust, reliable automation solution.

As a supplier to industries as diverse as motorsport, rail, defence, photography and cryogenics, Allan’s philosophy is to invest continuously in the latest equipment to ensure a competitive edge. The purchase at MACH of his latest automated production cell allows MK Precision to take on larger, more complex prismatic work, while at the same time embracing the full benefits of lights-out machining.

Allan comments: “We’re able to support our customers with the production of anything from one-off prototypes to large batch runs. The machinery that we buy has to offer us this versatility. The 600 mm diameter C-axis table on the VMX42SRTi, combined with the generous rotation range of the B-axis spindle head, allows us to manufacture large components without the need for multiple set-ups. Quite often, five-axis jobs can run for four, five or more hours. The benefit of adding the PC25 robot automation is that I can always have the next job running on the machine quickly, even if the previous job finishes in the middle of the night or during a weekend.”

Working closely with Hurco, Allan will first get familiar with the VMX42SRTi machine, which will be delivered in July, before the retrofitting of automation later this year. As MK Precision already has experience of Hurco’s job automation software and five-axis machining, the learning process will undoubtedly prove smooth.

A rotary union at the centre of the C axis provides clamping for the zero-point location workholding. Small cleats supplied with the robot create a lifting point for each of the vices or pallets that can be held in any of the 36 possible locations on the shelf units.

Hurco’s Job Manager software requires the user to simply select the workholding location and the next program, removing any requirement for specialist robot programming knowledge. As a result, training to use the automation takes as little as one day.