Case Study : Micron Subcon buy a Nakamura AS200MY Axis Lathe

Micron Precision in Kimbolton has just purchased a Nakamura Tome AS200 turning centre from the Engineering Technology Group (ETG). ETG teamed up with MTD, who went along to the company’s Cambridgeshire facility to find out a little more….

The AS200 is a new turning centre that has only recently been launched by Nakamura, so it was interesting to get the customers perspective. We spoke with Micron Precision’s Manufacturing Director, Mr John Fossey and John told MTD: ‘We already had a lathe but it didn’t have milling capabilities. The AS200 gives us the potential for milling, so we have certainly improved our productivity and capabilities since buying the machine.  A lot of our turning work requires secondary milling, so the Nakamura takes a lot of this work from the milling centres whilst reducing our set-up times and through-flow of work considerably. The Nakamura has instantly freed up a lot of capacity from our milling department.

Asked if the company looked at other alternatives to the Nakamura, Mr Fossey continues: ‘We did look at 2 or 3 machines from other vendors but the Nakamura was certainly the machine for us. It has a Y-axis facility that improves our capability, but when compared to the other machines, it was the brand that swung it for us. Nakamura is synonymous with quality and to get one of these machines at an affordable price was a great business decision.’

The Nakamura at Micron Precision has been supplied with an LNS 65mm diameter capacity bar-feeding unit to ensure production of its small turned parts is at optimum levels. As Mr Fossey concludes: ‘We are delighted with the new Nakamura from ETG. It’s a compact and robust machine with driven tooling stations that allow us to machine a complete range of parts in cycle times that are far faster than on our previous machine. Furthermore, with the range of driven tools, we can expand the scope of the work we do whilst providing more capacity for our other areas of the business.’

Micron Subcon buy a Nakamura AS200MY Axis Lathe