With a strong commitment to sustainable manufacturing, Cutting Blue Ltd has invested in machine tools from Doosan and DMG MORI that are supported with cutting tools, workholding, measurement equipment, PPE and storage solutions from Hoffmann. The company has invested in a large bed Doosan DNM6700 and a DMG MORI CMX600V machining centre to undertake the processing of primarily plastic and aluminium parts that are machined in batches from 100 to 500-off. Commenting upon the founding of a relationship with Hoffmann, Piotr Parobczy, the Managing Director of Cutting Blue says: “We decided to work with Hoffmann as its a brand I have known for more than 10 years and they have a very big range of cutting tools, workbenches, workholding, PPE and much more. So, it is just like having one shop to shop around. We started by buying cutting tools and after that, we bought some workholding, then PPE and at the moment we are looking to buy workstations that are very nice and slick.
Hoffmann can provide it all and this means we do not have to shop around to find different products from different sources.” “Additionally, when you buy from one place you only have one set of invoicing, one point of contact and you also get a better discount rate. I would certainly recommend Hoffmann.” Purchasing from one source, Cutting Blue has invested in the Hoffmann GridLine series of workstations and storage solutions, the precision Fahrion ER BT40 collet back ends, Garant Xtric vices, a suite of measuring equipment that includes micrometers, verniers and plug gauges as well as PPE equipment. From a cutting tool perspective, Piotr says: “We use a complete range of cutting tools from Hoffmann and the catalogue and online ordering is the easiest.”
Cutting Blue purchases a wide range of tools that include the solid carbide end mills to 16mm diameter and indexable end mills up to 50mm diameter. This includes the Holex solid carbide aluminium tools, the Garant Master Alu series of 4-flute high-performance cutters (HPC) with a DLC coating for machining aluminium, the Garant Master Alu Pick Pocket HPC roughing tools for trochoidal cutting and the Garant HPC 4-flute ball nose cutters with a radius tolerance of +/-0.005mm and a DLC coating. Commenting upon the cutting tools, Piotr continues: “The performance is very good and the DLC coated tools perform three times better than standard tools. These are also ideal for trochoidal cutting that is optimised with our application of OPEN MIND’s hyperMILL CAM software. Whilst we are only machining materials like aluminium and plastics, we are achieving a tool life of 1-2 months on many tools that are running 8 hours a day. Some of our plastic jobs are running 24/7 and the Hoffmann tools provide the consistency and performance levels that we require.”
Other benefits from dealing with Hoffmann include the Powercard guarantee. “This is a guarantee from Hoffmann on some of its indexable milling lines that if the tool gets damaged, Hoffmann will replace the tool at no cost. This doesn’t cover every tool range, but it certainly gives peace of mind,” says Piotr. “Another highlight is that Hoffmann has the CAD models available online for all of its tools and workholding solutions. These can be imported straight into our CAM system and it allows us to rapidly build our programmes without having to programme in all of the tool parameters. This reduces programming and set-up times, but it also provides a more reliable simulation model. This is especially the case when using special tools such as conical barrel tools,” says Piotr. Looking to the future, Piotr concludes: “The support from Hoffmann has been outstanding and the fact that we can order almost everything we need from one source is a major benefit, especially when the products are of very high quality.”