Because
of the distance involved and since the Drake name was new to them,
The Sutton team visited Drake and several Drake customer installations.
Based on its research, the company ordered the Drake GS:TE (Grinding
System: Thread External) machine with a table-mounted CNC contour
diamond roll dressing system to grind small batch special taps
with a diameter range of 3 mm to 25 mm.
The Drake GS:TE is designed to grind threads for
taps, power and steering worms, leadscrews and feedscrews, ballscrews,
medical screws, complex geometries, and multiple leads with size
control to ±0.005 mm.
But it was the fast setup feature and the flexibility
of the Drake machine that was most appealing to the Sutton team.
The GS:TE thread grinder arrived "Part Smart"--
part-specific, menu-driven programs for inch and metric product
had been built into the CNC for Sutton's particular applications
by Drake Systems Engineers.
Part Smart is what gives the
GS:TE its fast setup capability. The machine can be set up in
10 to 15 min, and all an operator has to do is punch in numbers
on the screen for part specs and process variables.
Pitch diameter, lead, dressing
cycles...all are handled in a single setup with programming that
guides the operator each step of the way. So making special taps
in an extreme short-run environment was nothing out of the ordinary
for the machine.
"The very first morning
on the job, it put us way ahead of our schedule," says Peter
Sutton, production engineer for Sutton Tools. He adds that the
purchase is part of the company's ongoing investment program to
keep it at world technology standards and enable the company to
produce world-class precision cutting tools at competitive prices.
"To a man, we were truly
amazed at the performance of our new machine," he says. So
much so, that the same week Sutton Tools requested a quote for
additional Drake machines and subsequently ordered two more. |
