Prove out potential

took the decision to use the move to our new home as the perfect time to search for a new, more powerful press that had better control and ancillary equipment that could speed up our try-out & commissioning processes and give us the ‘proving out’ capacity we wanted.”

He continued: “Worcester Presses has been superb. Russell Hartill and his team spent lots of time exploring our requirements, challenging our approach, and then identifying possible solutions – the best one being the impressive Chin Fong GTX 500-D & Tomac 3 in 1 TLF4-800 coil line.”

Phoenix Tooling & Development, which has also invested in a new GF+ mikron machining centre with ‘WorkPartner’ automated palletising, pushed the £750,000 button on the press investment and started to plan for its installation.

Midlands Machinery was appointed by Worcester Presses to get the Chin Fong in place, and this required taking the roof partially off for two days, removing part of the outside verge to accommodate the crane and building a one-foot-deep pit to house it.

“The press, which weighs about 55 tonnes without the ram, would just about fit under the roof if we moved the air receivers to the side, something Worcester Presses were able to facilitate,” continued Martin, who started his working life with Phoenix Tooling & Development’s sister business Cooke Brothers.

“It took about two weeks from start to finish to get the press in place, commissioned and ready for accommodating our ongoing press tooling projects. Five of our staff have been trained on how to get the most out of it, giving us full flexibility on the shopfloor.”

8 phoenixtooling.co.uk

A £200,000 investment in technology has boosted productivity and brought immediate advantages to customers at cable and wiring harness specialist Nicab Ltd.

The company, which has its headquarters at Silverstone Park, has acquired a Komax Alpha 530 machine which is capable of crimping and seal insertion of high-quality wire cross-sections of 0.13mm-6mm which. It can produce these at some nine metres per second – which would reach from Silverstone to Paris in under 24 hours.

Nicab Managing Director Nick Locke said: “The Komax puts us ahead of the competition for our customers and also safeguards jobs as it enables us to compete with similar operators outside Europe.

“The set-up time of the Komax gives us an immediate advantage for our customers in terms of efficiency, end quality and cost control.”

Nicab high-end cabling products are used by customers across a number of applications that require 100% reliability in demanding environments. These include life-saving medical equipment, aerospace, industrial, defence, automotive and audio-visual applications.

Nick added: “Because of the sheer volume and variety of different crimps and cables that we are able to produce as stock, our customers benefit from both the scale that we work to and our ability to supply a high-end product.