Strata Products is a leading UK manufacturer of home, office and garden plastic products. With over 200 employees working in a 320,000sq/ft facility, Strata Products operates its 35 injection moulding, blow moulding or rotationally moulding machines 24/7. To make sure the injection mould tools remain in perfect operational condition and to keep the production lines running, the company has invested in milling and turning technology from Colchester Machine Tools.
Based in Nottinghamshire, the company has won numerous awards from its blue-chip customer base and also recognised industry bodies. The company produces over 15 million units every year that are supplied to more than 40 countries around the world, processing over 13,000 tons of raw material in the process.
Looking at the toolroom that ensures the injection mould machines can run around the clock, Ben Hyder, the Engineering Manager at Strata Products says: “We make a wide range of plastic products and we have a wide range of plastic injection mould tooling that we have to keep in ‘tip-top’ condition, as some of these tools run 24 hours a day, seven days a week – for weeks on end. The tools have to maintain their accuracy and keep an excellent running order. Once the tool has completed its production run, it comes into the tool room. Sometimes the tool will only need a basic clean and service and a check over, but other times there will be problems associated with the running conditions. This will be general wear and tear or some damage that may have occurred.”
“A typical example of a problem would be an ejector pin that may have scored up and caused the injection mechanism to seize and the tool not to open and close correctly. An example of this was a reamed hole that we recently had to open up from 6 to 6.5mm on the milling machine that we bought from Colchester. I also have a plant pot injection mould tool where the pins that make the holes in the bottom of the plant part became flattened and damaged. This meant we had to make new pins that are made on the Colchester Triumph VS lathe. We have also had two broken nozzles from the barrel of a machine that secretes the plastic into the back of the injection mould tool – again, these have been re-made on the Colchester Triumph lathe. The machines are very useful at enabling our business to keep on top of any issues we have with our tooling.”
The Colchester Triumph VS lathe has a 400mm swing over the bed, 1200mm between centres and a 54mm spindle bore that makes the machine suitable for a wide range of components. With a 7.5kW spindle motor, the machine can achieve spindle speeds of 14 to 2500rpm.
Looking at the daily operations on the Colchester machines, Ben adds: “We manufacture lots of spare parts such as nozzles and other standard spare parts, as we like to keep a supply of spare components that we can just interchange in the tools. With the job being different every day, the Colchester machines are very user friendly and the features on the machine are very ergonomically placed for ease of operation.” Looking specifically at the Colchester Student Plus semi-CNC lathe, Ben adds: “It’s not a full CNC machine but it has around eight basic functions that you would use. It is also very easy to programme where you would have several basic dimensions to input and it writes the programme for you automatically. This means that you don’t have to learn any programming language or G-Code. We are very pleased with the Colchester machines and their ease of use – this suits the nature of our environment perfectly.”
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