Starting Hollingworth Design in 2005, Paul Hollingworth was working from home offering his extensive engineering design knowledge on a consultancy basis – something that has now evolved into a multi-million pound business. The company still offers design consultancy as well as developing its range of industrial compressed gas and vacuum systems and expanding into subcontract machining.
Paul built up from design work to the machining of prototype parts, initially with two small machines housed in his shed. As demand grew, the need for a more formal set-up became too much to ignore, so a move to a 4000ft2 facility in Denton with the arrival of a turning and machining centre from XYZ Machine Tools were the next steps.
“We looked at the numbers and the reluctance of other subcontractors to take on our work, having machining in-house was the logical conclusion,” says Paul Hollingworth, Director, Hollingworth Design. Seeing further growth opportunities by having this machining capacity, it wasn’t long before further investment was made and the move to subcontract machining services blossomed and drove a move to its present location, a 12,000ft2 facility in Stockport.
Now, the company has two Index bar-fed mill/turn centres, a G200-2 and a C100 machine. The machines have provided powerful B-axis capability and simultaneous cutting with up to four tools. “Any job that can be machined from bar is classed as a turning job, and goes on these machines, even if there is no actual turning involved,” says Paul Hollingworth. Applying this philosophy, allows cycle times to be drastically reduced, with help from Ceratizit UK & Ireland.
One component destined for use on superyachts, benefitted from Ceratizit’s input. Initially, a four-flute 6mm diameter milling cutter was being used on the 303 stainless steel components. With a recommendation from Ceratizit Technical Sales Engineer Matt Darbyshire, this was changed to a five flute Silverline solid carbide high-performance cutter from Ceratizit’s standard range. Running this cutter at 6250rpm and 0.1mm/rev feed rate with a 1.5mm step down every revolution, this cutter completed the entire batch of 4000 components without being changed.
“The performance of this cutter simply blew me away, we achieved a ycle time of 3.5 minutes per component, running the machine 24/7 and meeting all of our customer’s expectations.” This is a typical example of the approach that Hollingworth Design takes. It looks at every aspect of the job and engineers a process to make things better. To maximise the benefit for customers, Hollingworth Design looks at batch quantities from 500 upwards, recently completing a single order for 72,000 components. Machining these volumes demands support from Ceratizit in the form of regular visits from Matt along with daily management of tooling through the use of a Ceratizit TOM 840 tool vending system.
“Our turnover has grown dramatically in recent years with subcontract machining accounting for around £150,000 per month from our overall monthly turnover of £600,000 per month,” says Paul Hollingworth.
“Managing the tooling requirement for this level of work needed to be streamlined and where possible we had to eliminate the last-minute verbal orders for tooling to comply with our ERP system and maintain 24-hour operation.” Having the TOM 840 in place provides much greater flexibility for Hollingworth Design by having tooling available when needed, stock automatically re-ordered and restocked, without any requirement for in-house management time or added costs, with the tooling only invoiced when it is used.
The Ceratizit TOM 840 unit is also supplied and installed free of charge to any customer meeting the minimum monthly spend of £3000. Hollingworth Design also takes advantage of the Ceratizit re-grind service, which provides a quick turnaround for all of its solid high-speed steel and carbide cutters, returning them to ‘as new’ performance.
