ARCHER HITS ITS TARGET

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Following investment in two new Okuma Multi-Tasking machines, Archer Enterprises has successfully integrated production of its complex, fail-safe performance-critical components with one-off prototypes more associated with a jobbing shop environment, meaning there is practically no limit to what they can now achieve.

By Martin Oakham

From humble beginnings over three decades ago, Archer Enterprises, now operates a lean, highly productive, enterprise from its own purpose-built 800sqm facility situated on the NSW Central Coast. The company prides itself, having gained the trust of its customers, who appreciate the in-depth knowledge and experience they bring to the table. As a developer of world-class valve gear, it has become a specialist in design and analysis, materials and their properties, manufacturing processes, fluid control, pneumatics, hydraulics, pressure vessels and automation – the list goes on.

“We are making critical pneumatic and hydraulic assemblies amongst others”, said company director, Bradley Byrne. “Many of which entail multiple screw threads, bores, ports and ‘o’-ring grooves to be machined in 316 stainless or copper alloys. These are often integrated with commodity products like standard threaded fittings which are interchangeable with other products that we have no manufacturing control over”, explains Byrne. “Our strength is that we get involved with our customers, so that we gain a full understanding of their applications and the challenges they face when they integrate our product into their systems.”

“Being a small business of nine, we don’t have the luxury of having another go at it. We just wouldn’t survive.” Of course, the flip side of this is that they have the agility to maintain control of their own products. “We are essentially production engineers, with the added capacity to help customers develop prototypes and solutions for their applications”, said Byrne.

Multi tasking flexibility

Its here, that the flexibility of the two new multi-tasking Okuma’s have come into their own, allowing Archers to drop out of production to undertake an urgent prototype job for e.g. a renewable energy project, then get quickly back into production. “The Okuma Multus B300W and Okuma MacTurn 250W give us the ability to integrate a production manufacturing environment with a jobbing environment”, adds Byrne. What’s more, it gives us the agility and flexibility to be a first-class supplier in the supply chain of a multi-national.”
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Most components machined at Archer are relatively small; with the largest being the varying valve housings, or bodies, which weigh in at around 5kg fully machined. These are machined from billet, both in and out and at both ends, before being counter-bored and drilled around the circumference.

Before purchasing the new machines, a valve body required several setups on the companies single spindle single turret lathes; chiefly because they didn’t have the tooling capacity the Okuma’s offer. “Unlike brass, where we were able to use one tool to cut several features, the stainless components required individual tooling for most of the features to prevent premature tool wear. This meant we would run out of tooling capacity very quickly.”

Archer now keeps all the tooling needed for production and its jobbing work on the same machine so they no longer have to keep re-setting tooling every time they change jobs over. “Once you get that small batch out the way it takes literally 20 minutes to swap the collect chucks, insert new material, load the programme, do your first-off inspection and you’re in production,” enthuses Byrne

“One of our valve bodies went from 5 setups (2 setups in a turret lathe and then 3 setups in a machining centre) to a single setup on the Okuma. We used to manufacture in batches of a hundred to two hundred – it took us the good part of a week and a half, running eight hours a day before we got that first part coming off that we could use. It now takes us around half an hour.” Crikey! I exclaimed, that’s got to be the best time saving I’ve heard of in 25 years.

I asked how he had gone about selecting this technology and what outcomes he expected from his investment and weather these differed from what he got. He replied saying, “as a third generation family business, we all cut our teeth on early technology, but we’ve kept up with what’s out there in the market. We were aware of the benefits these multi-tasking machines would bring us.”

Brad said that there had been some challenges in the early stages getting integrated with their 3rd party CAM system, but the people at Okuma always helped out where it was needed. What’s more is that it was rare if this help didn’t come the same day. “The Okuma sales process, qualification of specifications, and access to their applications engineers was second to none”, said Byrne. “I’m confident the collaboration cements us as a leader when it comes to the high utilisation of our technology accompanied with consistent high quality output. We are now running ‘lights out’ every night. Okuma Japan are very interested in what we get up to, what our business is and whether the machine tools are performing or not. I am sure that will pay dividends as we grow.”

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