Crown Tooling was established in 1986 by Andrew King as a tool-making and general engineering business. It soon began manufacturing tools for the timber industry.
Demand from the local industry saw the business grow and focus on the design and manufacture of wood-related tooling. It bought its first computer numerical control machine (CNC) in 1992, and today has six CNC machines.
However, it saw the need to improve productivity by reducing the re-setting of components during manufacture. To that end, Crown brought in the Macturn 250 nine-axis machine from Okuma Australia.
The machine can both turn and mill a component using up to four simultaneous axes. It has two turning spindles that can automatically transfer a part from one spindle to the other under program control. This allows both ends of the part to be machined in one setup.
The company realised technological investment was not just a matter of buying the latest machine, but also the appropriate software for it. To control the machine, the company bought the Topsolid software from Missler on the advice of Cim Solutions. The software is an integrated product with a full-featured 3D parametric design modeller which is compatible with the latest machine tools, including the Macturn.
The combined solution was tested on the first job, which involved machining a floorboard cutter. This tool had previously needed six separate machining operations on two different machines. It has a multitude of complex angled faces to cater for inserts, representing a challenge to machining.
All of Crown’s personnel were first-time users of the software, requiring heavy support from Cim Solutions and Okuma to ensure compatibility between the software and the machine.
The cutter was completed in one operation within 1.5 hours. According to the company, the cycle time was reduced and the resulting part was more accurate than previous components.