Within two days of installation and training, can manufacturing machinery maker was in full production grinding seaming tooling, chucks and rolls on its internal grinding centre.
Within two days of installation and training, world-leading can making and can seaming machinery maker Carnaud Metalbox Engineering was in full production grinding seaming tooling, chucks and rolls on its Okamoto IGM-15NC internal grinding centre. Said Miles Waterworth manufacturing project manager: 'The machine was ordered as part of a package from 600 Centre, which was all delivered, installed and commissioned within one month'. 'I have been involved with many machine tool installations and I have never experienced such a slick operation.' The 600 Centre of Shepshed, Loughborough, UK, was approached by the Shipley, West Yorkshire-based company when it was decided to instigate a replacement programme for some outdated machine tools to enable it to widen its capability and allow it to keep pace with the global demand for innovative, price-driven canning solutions.

As a result, in addition to the Okamoto grinding centre, Carnaud Metalbox Engineering ordered a Harrison M300 centre lathe which was sourced by 600 Centre from the sister lathe making company in the 600 Group.

Carnaud was created back in 1932 as the engineering heart of the UK's Metal Box Company.

However, since the 1980s it has been a major manufacturer of a range of equipment for the can making industry, supplying household names such as Heinz, Coca Cola, Rexam and Baxters.

Today, as part of the Crown Holdings group of companies, it is able to claim to manufacture one out of every five beverage cans used in the world.

The ever-growing challenge to the business is to be highly innovative in its in-house production engineering which is exemplified within the company's can seaming department.

Can seaming tooling, such as chucks and rolls, can be crucial to the performance of seaming machinery and are manufactured from AISI 440C corrosion resistant steel or Stellite.

Prior to the Okamoto, these were manufactured on an ageing grinding machine that never provided the flexibility that was now required to be introduced into the process.

This is particularly so as seaming chucks are custom designed and made specifically for each type of can seaming machine and always demand high levels of precision.

Says Waterworth: 'Our previous grinding machine was dedicated to specific tasks which led to bottleneck situations beginning to arise on seaming tooling, so we decided to take a long look at the grinding machine market and contacted a number of suppliers.' The search very soon concentrated on one supplier, 600 Centre.

As Miles Waterworth explains: 'They took us to another customer that was using an Okamoto IGM-15NC internal machine that had been installed for some time and demonstrated the excellent value and longevity that the machine could offer'.

'Also 600 Centre could supply a new centre lathe as a package, which we could use to make final sizing adjustments on components such as spacers used during assembly.' The Okamoto IGM-15NC internal grinder features graphically assisted conversational programming and is a compact, very rigid machine.

It is able to automatically grind up to eight different internal features between 6mm and 150mm diameter and provides a working stroke up to 170mm.

Workpieces up to 260mm diameter can be accommodated inside the splash guarding, though removal of the guard within the main machine guarding confine, provides the occasional capacity up to 600mm diameter swing over the table.

Worktable travel Z-axis is 500mm with feed rates up to 10m/min.

The maximum X-axis wheel spindle cross feed travel is 170mm.

The Fanuc 18T two-axis simultaneous control system fitted to the IGM-15NC offers conversational input and rapid `teach-in' programming options aided by parametric grinding routines for straight, taper, face and multiple step grinding.

Once the grinding operation is in progress an interrupt facility enables manual dressing in-cycle without loss of position within the program.

Internal and external diameters and faces can thus be ground in a single chucking cycle and absolute co-ordinate positioning eliminates any requirement to originate or datum the machine at start up.

Waterworth concludes: 'The adaptability of the Okamoto is where we are really scoring against our previously dedicated machine'.

'It's proving to be an excellent investment and we have now also started using it on night shift when demand dictates.'