Streamlining Component Setting and Inspection

Universal Manufacturing Company (Unimac) was started in 1987 after a second-hand machine from Germany was bought for manufacturing components needed in sugar and cement plants. It later switched to manufacturing general engineering components. Currently, the company manufactures large precision parts used for railway engines, power generation plants, cement manufacturing plants and other heavy engineering applications.

Unimac has grown into a versatile manufacturer aiming to offer one stop solution for all machining needs.

The machine shop spread over an area of 20,000 sq ft houses an array of large heavy duty German conventional boring machines as well as latest CNC machining centers which ensure precision manufacturing along with a high production rate.

The large machining capacity has a table size of upto 2.4 m X 6 m for conventional machines and 4.25 m x 2.7 m for CNC machines allied with in-house robotic fabrication capability and in-house CAD/CAM design center.

The Inspection Challenge

What had to be addressed was the cycle time for machining a turbo charger housing that would take 46 hours. During this process, at the semi-finished stage, the part would be taken to an inspection facility to be checked for flatness, squareness, parallelism and positional accuracy. The part would then be brought back to the machine, and have to be realigned and set before further machining could take place. This process would take three hours and have to be carried out twice, meaning that the machine lay idle for six hours during each manufacturing cycle. In this manual process, part setting itself takes 30 minutes.

Advantage Primo System

Benefits Abound

“After installing the Primo system, the manpower cost, material handling costs, material equipment and power consumption charges are saved so no additional investment is required. This gives flexibility to the manufacturing unit in accepting orders for any size and for segments such as the machine tool industry. The manual analysis of results is also avoided, as the data is available on the same controller. It’s an amazing experience to use Renishaw machine tool probes, which are being used by us for the first time,” said Ashok Mungale, Director, Unimac.

“Another advantage of the Primo system is that it combines part set up, part inspection and tool setting capabilities in one system so there is no need to source separate items. The Primo system is definitely worth recommending for every engineering industry,” he added.

Trust Factor

Unimac first heard about Renishaw when ten years ago it purchased its CMM, which came fitted with a Renishaw probe. Following this, Unimac formed a relationship with Renishaw, and received regular updates about new product developments. Its engineers analysed all of the machining applications at Unimac thoroughly, and offered best practice advice and guidance on which products would be most suitable for Unimac’s needs. The Primo system is the company’s first machine tool probe.

Mungale concluded, “Since we were convinced with the sales, service and application aspects of Renishaw, we installed its telescoping ballbar to help maintain machine accuracy. After this, it was easy to ascertain whether the fault was during machining and the errors could then be eliminated. Results from the ballbar are always perfect so a mutual trust has developed between Renishaw and us”.

“After installing the Primo system, the manpower cost, material handling costs, material equipment and power consumption charges are saved so no additional investment is required.”

Ashok Mungale, Director, Unimac

Unimac

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