Manufacturing Machinery World October 2021

AEROSPACE CASE STUDY
AIRCRAFT EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURER IMPROVES
MACHINING EFFICIENCY FOR LARGER COMPONENTS
Father and son team Andy and Owen
Phillips, both of whom are pilots and
aviation engineering enthusiasts, started a
subcontract machining business in Havant in
1994. After four years, they applied their
extensive knowledge acquired over many
years of building and flying aircraft to
transition their firm, Andair
(www.andair.co.uk), into a manufacturer of
fuel system components for light aircraft in
the sport, amateur-build and commercial
aviation sectors.
The business, which is certified by QAS
International and to ISO 9001:2008, is now a
leading global producer of such equipment,
with 90 percent of its fuel selectors, filters,
check valves, gascolators and fuel pumps
going to export markets. Regular customers
include Cessna, Cirrus, Czech Sport Aircraft,
Diamond, Grob, Grumman-Northrop,
Rotax/Bombardier, Scaled Composites,
Technam and Vans.
Miyano fixed-head, twin-spindle CNC
lathes from Citizen Machinery UK
(www.citizenmachinery.co.uk) have
underpinned production of Andair's turned
and milled parts since January 2005, when
the first turning centre with sub spindle was
delivered to the Havant factory, a 5-axis
BND-42S. It proved so efficient that a second,
identical model was ordered six weeks later.
Fast-forward 16 years and the company has
bought a total of seven Miyanos, the latest
being the first 80 mm bar capacity ABX lathe
to be installed in the UK. It arrived on the
shop floor in June 2020 equipped with an
Iemca KID 80 short bar magazine.
Andair had been waiting eagerly for the
Owen Phillips, joint owner of Andair. He is
a pilot, aircraft builder currently
constructing his third aircraft, a Vans RV7,
and a radio controlled aircraft enthusiast as
well as being a manufacturer of aircraft fuel
system components.
launch of the 80 mm version of this twinspindle
machine with two Y-axis turrets,
having since 2015 been producing 3 inch and
2.75 inch diameter components from billet
held in a Hainbuch chuck in the main spindle
of a smaller ABX-64SYY, of which there are
two in the Havant factory. The high
requirement for components of this size
meant that the lathes were being used for
chuck work 60 percent of the time.
Owen said, "Production efficiency of our
larger components used to be lower because
we could only manufacture a limited number
of components from a billet, say five or
perhaps seven. In the case of the aluminium
Owen Phillips in front of the new 80 mm bar capacity Miyano ABX-80THY fixed-head
mill-turn centre from Citizen Machinery UK. He is inspecting an oil-air separator body
produced on the machine.
body for an oil-air separator we are currently
machining, we could only produce one per
billet.
"Now all these parts can be machined
from bar using the 80 mm capacity lathe,
saving a lot of time. It runs continuously
throughout the day and although we are not
set up for 24/7 operation at present, with this
machine and our other Miyano bar autos is it
is feasible in the future."
The other lathes in the factory all have
twin turrets and Owen had ordered a similar
specification for the 80 mm model. Due to the
cancellation of the MACH 2020 machine tool
exhibition, however, which should have been
held in Birmingham last April, Citizen
Machinery had in stock a triple-turret ABX-
80THY 12-axis model with a Fanuc control
system that it had intended to launch at the
show. Owen was initially hesitant when
offered the machine, having never used a
lathe of that configuration before, but
decided to buy it anyway as it was available
immediately. It turned out to be a revelation.
He enthused, "I would not buy another
twin-turret machine in future, because
having three turrets is so much more
productive. I would like a four-turret version
if Miyano made one.
"It is no problem to transfer work to the
more complex lathe, as a new program can be
checked easily using the manual retrace
function in the control, avoiding any
possibility of interference between tool and
workpiece."
He explained that the two turrets
positioned above the spindle centreline, each
with 12 live stations, are dedicated to
working at the main and counter spindles
respectively. The third turret is located below
and has unrestricted travel to operate at
either spindle to provide flexibility for
balancing front and reverse end machining.
Three tools can be in cut simultaneously to
achieve very high levels of machining
efficiency.
About 60 different parts have so far been
produced on the new lathe, all from 3 inch
diameter bar. In fact, in one instance where a
customer required a large valve machined
from a 4.5 inch diameter billet, Owen turned
the end of it down to 80 mm so that it could
be machined in the collet.
In the case of the oil-air separator body, it
is now possible to machine five from bar in
30 minutes whereas before, with an operator
loading billets manually into the chuck of an
ABX-64SYY, it took at least 45 minutes to
achieve the same output. In other words,
productivity has been boosted by more than
50 percent. A further benefit to Andair is that
the two 64 mm bar lathes can now be
28 Manufacturing Machinery World, October 2021