When moving production of ball-lock punches from machining centres to turning centres, AW Precision encountered a number of tooling problems - until it teamed up with ITC Tooling of Tamworth.

When moving production of ball-lock punches from machining centres to turning centres, AW Precision encountered a number of tooling problems - until it teamed up with ITC Tooling of Tamworth. Following numerous tooling trials with a multitude of suppliers; the Rugby based manufacturer of punches, dies, die-sets and press tool accessories for the automotive, pharmaceutical and confectionary industries has hit a sweet spot with ITC. A number of AW Precision's automotive customers use a ball lock system to enable press tool setters to quickly and efficiently click-out damaged punches and click-in a new one.

To guarantee the high speed steel punches do not slip out of the press tool during production or alternately become nigh on impossible to remove, the punches must be produced to extremely tight tolerances.

This tolerance is also important to maintain the punches position within the press tool and so avoiding the time consuming resetting of the tool once the punch has been changed.

With production of over 1,000 punches per week for this particular punch - production needed to be exceptionally reliable.

Moving production of the parts to the new Biglia fixed head turning centres, multinational manufacturer AW Precision conducted trials with a number of tooling suppliers.

The best performing tool managed to inconsistently produce up to 100 punches before breaking.

The company discussed the matter with ITC sales engineer Paul Ensor.

With its capability to tailor cutters to the exacting needs of the customer, it wasn't long before ITC found the optimum solution.

A European leader in press tool accessory manufacture; AW Precision produce a similar ball-lock form on nine different diameter punches.

Split between metric and imperial dimensions for the US and European markets the diameter range has very few standard dimensions.

This needed an equal amount of bespoke cutting tools to fulfil the needs of the application.

The key aspect was maintaining tight tolerances of less than +/-0.005mm whilst machining at angles.

The solution from ITC was in the cutter geometry.

Mr Ensor comments: 'Competitors would take a standard tool and grind it to the desired size; this method changes the cutter geometries resulting in breakages and poor tool life.

We at ITC manufacture cutters from blanks and this guarantees the correct tool geometry of the cutter.' Another issue that led to tool breakages was poor rigidity of cutting tools.

Combining poor tooling with a turning turret that inherently has less rigidity than a machining centre; the result was always going to be poor tool life.

The rigidity of the ITC range of cutters supplied to AW Precision has enhanced tool life and surface finish considerably.

The ITC solution of bespoke ball nosed cutters gave AW Precision the extremely accurate and reliable tool geometry required.

This combination now enables the customer to consistently produce 300 punches before changing the cutting tool.

ITC also provides the company with a re-grind service and this additional service makes the tooling a very cost effective exercise.

Turning team leader at AW Precision, Mr Ian Hartnack says: 'We had considerable trouble finding a reliable and consistently high performing cutting tool.

The ITC cutters overcame any performance problems we encountered and gave us peace of mind.

Now, the worn ITC tools are used for roughing operations whilst the new or re-ground tools are used for finishing operations.

With ITC being a UK manufacturer we are guaranteed an excellent turnaround for new and re-ground tools.' AW Precision's Works Director Graham Tranter concludes: 'We have invested heavily in the latest lights out manufacturing equipment and the importance of high quality tooling to support the machines cannot be overstated.

ITC tools have performed in many cases better than anything available in the market and we are very pleased with the products and service we receive.'

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