MRT Castings are a die casting, machining and finishing specialist who work across a range of industries including aerospace, medical, automotive and specialist lighting. They offer a complete solution for their customers, taking products from the design stage through to production.
MRT Castings invested in the ZOLLER Smile 420 to minimise their tool presetting time. This has allowed them to ensure precise tool measurement and presetting, improve their tooling processes and guarantee consistent product results.
ZOLLER UK delivers world-leading precision tool presetting, inspection, storage and management solutions, adding improved efficiency and value to any manufacturing process.
Project Brief:
MRT Castings are responsible for every stage of the components development, from design through to production. They needed to ensure that their customers could be confident in their accuracy, efficiency and reliability.
MRT Castings were looking to update their old tool setting technology to the latest technology and contacted ZOLLER UK to explore their tool presetting and management options.
“When customers come to us, they are generally looking for a complete solution. They are entrusting the entire process to us, taking a component right from the original concept through to a finished part. Our customers need confidence that we can finish the entire process accurately,” explained MRT Casting’s Managing Director, Phil Rawnson.
The Solution:
MRT Castings invested in the ZOLLER Smile 420 tool presetter, supplied by ZOLLER UK, to elevate their tool management, optimising production processes, minimising breakdowns, and boosting overall productivity.
The ZOLLER Smile 420’s CNC spindle and auto-focus features are designed for shopfloor environments. It offers robust construction, ergonomic features and seamless data transfers to ensure exceptional accuracy and repeatability.
“We installed a ZOLLER Smile 420 presetter and it’s made a fairly instant impact to our production capacity. Prior to the ZOLLER Smile 420 tool presetter, we were setting our tools directly onto the machine. Typical set up might have anywhere between 15 and 40 tools and we were loading every single one into the machine to measure to load into the machine manually. The ZOLLER gives us the potential to preset all of our tools offline whilst the previous job is still running,” said Phil.
The Benefits:
Investing in a tool presetting solution from ZOLLER UK has allowed MRT Castings to enhance the accuracy of their tooling and upgrade their old machines to the latest technology. MRT Castings is now able to ensure speed, accuracy and consistency in order to streamline their manufacturing processes.
Phil explained the benefits of having the ZOLLER tool presetter on their shopfloor:
“The ZOLLER Smile 420 tool presetter has given us the opportunity to reduce our machine set-up times and overall downtimes, as well as increasing the accuracy of our tool measurements.
“Before, when we ran a part through, we only realised if there had been an error in the tool setting after we had checked it on the CMM. Whereas now, the accurate tool measurements from the ZOLLER feed straight into the CNC machine which helps to cut down on those errors and create large potential savings. By the end of the first week, the machine was already being used for every set up on the shopfloor.
“We are very comfortable that this is a competitive machine, and therefore it was an easy judgement call for us to make the investment.
“When we first started talking to the ZOLLER UK guys, they instantly they tried to understand our applications, as well as the machine tools we were measuring. They really got under the skin of what we were looking for and they gave us a range of different options. The ZOLLER UK guys have always been easily accessible and any usability queries have been instantly answered.
“We haven’t had any maintenance issues with the Smile 420 tool presetter, we’d recommend it to anyone.”
Why ZOLLER UK?
ZOLLER UK delivers world-leading precision of tool-setting, inspection, storage and management solutions, adding improved efficiency and value to any manufacturing process.
ZOLLER UK is part of the Carfulan Group who specialise in providing the most advanced manufacturing technologies available, helping customers across their five divisions to achieve optimal performance and end-product excellence.
