PRV-Engineering is constantly moving with the times and as part of the company’s recent £1.25million investment, managing director Simon Jones has added a vertical travelling column machining centre with full 5-Axis Synchronous milling ability.
Five-sided machining, also known as 3+2, is the process of setting up a part once and using a machine like the Mazak VTC800/30SR to machine five sides instead of machining the part one side at a time using a conventional 3-Axis machining centre.
There are many methods employed in Tool Making, ranging from the traditional processes to the more modern methods using CAD designs and CNC machining. It goes without saying, that the technique employed depends upon the quality, precision and quantity of tools required.
With improved machining technologies and design capabilities, it has become easier to produce high performance precision manufactured tools. However, designing and making these tools requires a great deal of planning, high performance equipment, technical know-how and of course, skill.
Although the current recession has created difficulties in business, PRV Engineering has spent the last year establishing a platform on which they can confidently support their ambitious plans- 2013 is about building for the future.
CEO Simon Jones has invested £1.25million in the company over that 12 month period, primarily to increase the size and capacity of the unit from 29,000 to 38,000 square feet. As part of the overall development, PRV Engineering have also installed a state of the art crane with a 10 tonne overhead capacity. “These are exciting time for us,” said Simon, who confirmed that PRV has also returned to the construction industry from which they retracted several years ago.
Deep hole drilling is beneficial across several applications and requires specialist equipment to maintain the straightness and tolerances. Oil and gas exploration equipment, armaments, aerospace equipment and engines are amongst the common applications for deep hole drilling and machining processes, and in each of these industries hole qualities are necessary for high-performance end products, such as landing gear that easily retracts. It’s a given that production requires deep hole drilling that is reliable, but accurate and time-efficient.
5-axis machining is now used by many machining companies and allows machining of a part along 5 axes of motion compared to 3 axes in one setup. While this can be a cost saving factor, 5 Axis machining is used more often for complex contour work, which may need simultaneous movement of all 5 Axes.
Recent advances in software have helped make the conversion from 3-axis and 3+2 axis positioning to simultaneous 5-axis machining accessible to everyday numerical control programmers.
Although some of these techniques might require additional programming time, the benefits of reduced machining, setup time and reduced hand-polishing outweigh the costs.
CNC machining or to give it its full title “Computer Numerical Control” machining, allows for increased efficiency through higher levels of automation. In simple terms, the machine and its computer controls to do all the work.
As a result and having taken into consideration their expense and complexity, the machines quickly pay for themselves by reducing the workload and preventing errors. That’s the first advantage of many. CNC machines are widely used in the manufacturing industry with traditional machines, such as vertical millers, centre lathes, shaping machines and routers, having been overtaken.
PRV Engineering are one of the UK’s top high precision engineering service providers. But high precision engineering is not as a rule, something that is at the forefront of most people’s thoughts. But with the stunning show that was the superb opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games, all Brits were justifiably proud of the quality innovative engineering that provided the wherewithal to stage what many are calling the greatest show on Earth.
Over 62,000 people were present in the stadium to witness the spectacle, which was also watched on TV by a global audience estimated to have been in the region of over 1 billion people. Given such unprecedented viewing figures, it would have been an absolute catastrophe if one of the smoking chimney mechanisms had failed, causing a chimney not to rise, or to stop half way through its emergence. No, the engineering, not just for the chimneys, but for all of the moving components, had to be spot on – fail-proof in actual fact.
Quality is the number 1 prerequisite when you drill down to the roots of success. So says Simon Jones, owner and director of PRV Engineering Ltd, one of the fastest growing success stories in the engineering machining services sector in recent years.
The reason that PRV maintain that quality is the number 1 prerequisite, is that it underpins everything else. It doesn’t matter how quickly you can get the job done. Nor does it matter that the price is the cheapest available. If the product, or the service that you supply as a manufacturing and installation engineering services provider does not meet the specification, or the client’s expectations, the other commercial factors are irrelevant. Who better than PRV to know?
Metalwork Fabrication is a skilled, specialist operation, and not one that enough people first associate with PRV Engineering. Maybe that’s because our expertise in other engineering services such a deep hole drilling get more publicity. But here at PRV Engineering, we offer a complete metalwork engineering service that includes the very best in metalwork fabrication.
It might come as some surprise to learn that our metalwork fabrication department regularly turns out a whole range of beautifully finished, fabricated metal products that include:
5 Axis machining is the one of the most advanced components of Computer Numerical Control, (or CNC for short as it is more popularly known in the engineering world), metal engineering. CNC machining has been around now for several decades. It heralded the arrival of pre-programmed automation on a scale of accuracy hitherto unknown. Hardly surprising then that PRV Engineering, one of the engineering industry’s top exponents of top quality engineering services, should be at the forefront of this technology; not only here in the UK, but across mainland Europe too.
As engineering technology progressed, it was only a matter of time before machining in all available planes became a possibility. Having computerised control that allows the pre-programming of very complicated operations in all five axis, has now been taken to the ultimate level with some stunning 5 axis machinery coming onto the market – none better that PRV Engineering’s travelling vertical column machinery centre, the Mazak VTC800/30SR.
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