🎧 Subcontractor ramps up productivity with DMG MORI

As part of the British Engines Group of companies, BEL Engineering was established in 2012 as a project-managed CNC machining business to cater for the growing demand for precision subcontract machining. Operating from its integrated manufacturing facility in Newcastle upon Tyne, BEL can manufacture components from as small as 3mm diameter to 50-tonne components for customers in a wide variety of sectors, including civil nuclear, defence, aerospace, marine and oil & gas. When the company needed to increase its productivity on a long-running project, it turned to DMG MORI for a solution. 

Discussing the solution, Paul Robson, General Manager at BEL Engineering Ltd says: “The cap-ex on the machines here is about £2.5m which is quite a substantial investment in the business. We purchased six DMG MORI NLX machines, two of them are gantry machines and the other four are barfed machines. We specified gantry-type machines for specific products to go through those machines and the longer we have those machines, the more we see what they are capable of. Realising the capability of the DMG MORI NLX Series has opened up more opportunities for us to put more products through the machines. They are capable of doing unmanned machining which is a great bonus to our productivity. The footprint of the machines is very small considering the amount of material that they can hold and the parts they can machine.”

Looking at a brake body that BEL produces for a sister company in the group, Phil Westgarth from BEL Engineering says: “The main problem with this part is that it needed around five operations to reach completion. There are a couple of turning operations where the dimensions and tolerances are tied. It then goes to a drilling operation where once again the holes are tied to each other and the diameters. After that, there are two grinding operations to hit the flatness and parallel tolerances. This used to cause a problem in processing times and backlogs were created in other areas. We were pushing parts onto machines that already had high workloads – this created a lot of bottlenecks. Our grinding cell was virtually overloaded, as was the milling cell and we were just pushing more work into those cells. There was also the issue that every time you had to reset a job there was another opportunity for error to creep into the process.”

Phil Westgarth adds: “Looking at the part, we were searching for an opportunity to complete them in a single process. This was the overriding aim of this journey. We needed to make sure that whatever process we put in place, was capable of meeting all the design tolerances required by the customer – ideally in one operation. The fact that the DMG MORI machines have a Y-axis allows us to machine all of the features in a single hit. This eliminated any need for further machining on the mill, and the Y-axis provides far better accuracy than just a C-axis lathe would do. On the DMG MORI NLX machine, it’s a full C-axis and it isn’t belt driven. This gives you higher accuracy and faster processing times.”

Looking back at how the company has evolved, Paul Robson says: “We were a little apprehensive about lights out machining and worried that we might come in the next day to hundreds of parts that would just go in the bin. However, we had support from DMG and we have worked through the processes and we are getting repeatability. This is positively affecting the productivity coming out of the machines and the quality we are delivering to customers.”

“It is these factors that are a reflection of why DMG MORI was chosen as our supplier. Initially, we weren’t sure if the machines could meet all of our capability demands, but the sales team and the engineers assured us that the machines could do the job – and they delivered.”

Managing Director at DMG MORI UK, Mr Steve Finn says: “One thing that impresses me at this company is how they have embraced one-hit machining. They don’t just machine parts from the main spindle to the sub-spindle, they also embrace workpiece handling with the gantry loading system as well. Parts are coming in as raw material and leaving the machines as finished components that are ready to deliver to the customers. This is super efficient.” 

Phil Westgarth continues: “Batch quantities are pretty high for our business and we don’t necessarily want somebody standing next to the machine for every job that comes off the machines. This is why we wanted accurate and capable machines that could control the process. It had to be a machine capable of giving us what we wanted and could hit all the tolerances in one go without any further operations. We are very pleased with the machines we have invested in. The DMG MORI gantry-type machines are for our larger parts and the four bar-fed machines are ideal for our smaller components. It really transforms the production of these parts, it is ‘night and day’ from where we were previously. We are now running 24 hours a day and five days a week in most cases – and the machines just do what they need to do.”