Manufacturing Machinery World April 2024

CASE STUDY
MOBILITY AID MANUFACTURER USES
XYZ MACHINE TOOLS
XYZ Machine Tools is helping Handicare to
maintain the accuracy, rigidity and quality of
its stairlifts by machining the mating surfaces
of its tubular components using an XYZ RMX
3500 for straight sections and an XYZ RMX
4000 for curved sections to achieve a perfect
fit.
Handicare is a leader in its industry
covering accessibility, patient handling and
vehicle accessibility and can trace its roots
back to 1886. Its objectives are to offer
solutions and support to increase the
independence of physically challenged or
elderly people, and to enable them to live an
active life on their terms as well as to
facilitate work for their care providers and
family.
Handicare’s headquarters are located in
Stockholm, Sweden and it sells its products
and solutions globally and is active in more
than 40 countries. Of the Group’s total
revenue in 2020, Europe accounted for 71%,
North America for 28 % and the rest of the
world 1%.
One of its UK manufacturing facilities is
at Kingswinford, Birmingham where it
designs and manufactures straight and
curved stairlifts, producing more than 50
every day. Each stairlift is bespoke, designed
to fit its customers’ individual stair
configuration. The key element of each
stairlift is a pair of tubular runners with gear
racks welded to them. These support the seat
and, with its pinion drive and rollers, allow it
to transport the customer smoothly and
safely between floors. Each set is unique and
carefully designed to fit the stairwell.
During the design phase of each stairlift,
consideration has to be given to handling the
Set of stairlift tubes finished and ready for shipping
Gary Steele operates the XYZ RMX 4000
tube sections and accessibility for installation
and assembly. This means that the set of
tubes needs to be made in sections ready for
assembly on site. Some shapes for curved
stairlifts can be complex, for example moving
the seat to a park position around a newel
post, so these need particular care during
manufacture.
Nabil Mohamed, Production Engineer at
Handicare explains, “For straight stairlift
sections the tubes and gear rack are robot
welded together and they are then cut to
length. We leave an excess of 0.5 mm which
is then machined off on the XYZ RMX 3500.
We do this to make sure that the gear profile
on the rack is perfect when we join the tubes.
If we didn’t do this and left a slight mismatch
on the gear profile, the customer would feel
an uncomfortable jolt every time the seat
went over a joint.”
The XYZ RMX 3500 is dedicated to
straight sections and has a set of fixtures on
the bed each designed to lock into the gear
profiles to position the tube in the exact
position required to mill across the end and
generate an accurate gear profile and perfect
tube length. The open design of the bed mill
makes it possible to work with long tube
sections which overhang the bed. The
machine’s ProtoTRAK® control has the
different programs already prepared so that
it is easy to select the one required for the
fixtures being used.
For curved profile stairlifts, the process is
similar with tube sections being machined on
the XYZ RMX 4000. This has a larger bed
1474mm x 355mm and has fixtures loaded to
suit the machining the ends of curved
sections, again locating the tubes on the gear
rack to ensure end machining is accurate.
Further special purpose machinery cleans
the burrs inside and outside the tubes, while
etched marks on each component give
reliable identification. To join tubes, straight
sections can be connected with crimped
inserts and cross drilled bolt holes, while
curved sections are robot welded together
with an internal collar. Special purpose
machines clamp components together for
these operations to ensure on site assembly
goes smoothly before physical inspection
and surface finishing.
Nabil Mohamed says, “Every component
goes through one of the XYZ RMX machines,
so they are a crucial part of the process, and
their record of reliability is very important to
us. Being able to accurately machine the ends
of every tube and gear rack is a vital part of
the quality, performance and reliability of
our products.”
www.xyzmachinetools.com
52 Manufacturing Machinery World, April 2024