A new turning and milling centre at EDM Precision Technologies is adding value for customers, bringing subcontracted work back in-house and allowing it to offer a complete in-house service for critical applications.

The new machine, a Nakamura-Tome AS200, was supplied by Turning Technologies, a member of the Engineering Technology Group.

EDM specialises in wire and spark electro-discharge machining, and the focus is on high precision, high quality and fast turnaround on high-value parts – often in exotic and expensive materials.

Managing Director Paul Waldron explains that the investment in the Nakamura turning centre brings a new, complementary, capability to the company.

“It seems to be the case that a lot of components that need EDM work need turning too. In a lot of cases a turned blank was being finished on an EDM machine, and we often had to get someone else to turn the blanks for us.

“So about a 9 months ago, when we were seriously looking to move to new premises, and we knew that we will have some extra space, we thought why don’t we invest in a turning machine?

"Rather than investing in a simple lathe, we wanted a turning centre that would enable us to mill features onto turned parts and produce more complex components in one hit prior to them being finished on one of our 15 CNC wire or spark erosion machines.

“This added capability enables us to ensure high quality, fast delivery and good value on a wider variety of complex parts.”

Paul Waldron says: “The parts are as precise as we have had made by who we consider to be the top motorsport turning subcontractors. Which is where we were having these parts made before. Even without the years of experience they have, the new machine has made us comparable on quality.”

He says that the machine has also allowed the company to go after more Formula One work.

“Formula One represents about 20% of our business and there were components for those customers that we were turning away as we would have been relying on outside subcontractors turning pre-edm blanks. This was a problem, as you really don’t want to lose control of time critical jobs by putting an element of the work out to a third party. If you subcontract out a component for a race team you are putting yourself at risk, so we were turning that work away because we didn’t do turning in-house – now we can.”

Having control of the process also provides the possibility of improving it.

On one component, EDM used a subcontractor to produce a rough blank which then required a lot of wire eroding and some spark eroding to get to the finished part. Now, rather than wire eroding the bore and outside diameter, these can be turned to the required accuracy on the AS200.

“Now we can turn the bore and the outside diameter as accurately as the drawing requires rather than wire erode them. We only spark the bits that really need sparking, which will reduce our unit cost dramatically,” says Paul Waldron.

Founded in 1992, EDM Precision Engineering has been based at Silverstone since 1995 and moved to new larger premises right opposite the main entrance to Silverstone in June this year.