Mould toolmaker, Jordans, has made large investments to fend off foreign competition including an 800 tonne injection moulding machine, two high speed CNC machining centres and a CNC horizontal borer.

Jordans (Toolmakers)of Havant is an example of a successful UK engineering company holding off the advances of foreign competition. The manufacturer of plastic injection mould tools recently opened a new 22,500 sq/ft facility to provide capacity to produce 50 tonne tools and stave off the competition. The expansion has opened up new markets for Jordans; however it has required investment to the tune of over £1m in 2004.

This includes an 800 tonne injection moulding machine, two high speed CNC machining centres, a CNC horizontal borer plus a host of CAD/CAM computer technologies.

The arrival of high specification machine tools and technologies has brought a requirement for specialist tooling, and Jordans has employed TaeguTec to fulfil this task.

The company uses TaeguTec tooling for the machining of its mould tools.

The tooling for Ford, Nissan, BMW, Toyota and Jaguar produces componenets such as bumpers, centre consoles and a host of other plastic automotive interior and exterior parts.

The company predominantly uses P20 tool steel and a 60Hrc H13 steel.

Machining these materials was the reason for the introduction of TaeguTec's Bull Mill.

Specifically designed for Mould and Die machining, the Bull Mill has provided Jordans with significant productivity improvements.

CNC Manager Ben Yule comments: 'We have been using the Bull Mill two months and it is superb! We were using a competitor's cutter but the Bull Mill has doubled our feed rates.

It has given us more than an hour tool life in comparison to 20 minutes with the previous cutter.' 'We used an 80mm Bull Mill on P20 Tool Steel, which was used to produce an automotive back plate tool.

As soon as the cutter started we could immediately see the improvement.

We thought that justifying the cost of a tool supplier change to management would be difficult, but TaeguTec produced evaluation reports.

The reports showed speed, feed and depth of cut improvements as well as cycle time, cost per part, cost per insert and machining cost savings thus making justification simple.' The Bull Cutter evaluation showed that feed could be trebled to slash cutting time per pass from 18 to 6 minutes, resulting in cycle times per component falling from 108 to 46 minutes.

The Bull Mill has given Jordans a machining cost saving per part of 57% and a total cost saving per part of 43%.

The benefits have resulted in Jordans saving up to £700 for 20 hours of production on certain components.

Yule continues: 'The cutters have the capability of running even faster but the size and weight of the components restricts significant feed increases.

We are very pleased with the results and will be looking to introduce more TaeguTec tooling to the facility.' The Bull Mill has been in use for 2 months at Jordans and as it reaps the benefits, the company is already introducing further TaeguTec tooling.

The new range of solid carbide cutters has been introduced and is also delivering time and cost benefits.

The company now uses the carbide range for normal and high speed applications utilising the heat shrink method for finishing components.

Another introduction has been the new Rib Processing cutters.

Using diameters down to 1mm, the ball nose and slot drill style cutters are used for machining small radii, slots and general picking out.